Valeri Rusmanov stood rooted to the spot and watched with rising panic as his master destroyed his study.
Dracula’s rage – a churning, elemental fury that burned so brightly it had once called something dark and terrible out of a dimension other than our own, that had condemned thousands of men and women to agonising, indecent death – boiled out of his pores like a cloud of hungry fire. He had asked only a single question after Valeri had passed on the news he had received from his informant inside Blacklight, news that he was still struggling to come to terms with himself; the unthinkable revelation that his younger brother Valentin had betrayed them, had voluntarily sided with Department 19 against them.
“Is your man sure?” Dracula had asked.
Valeri, his heart gripped with fear at the likely outcome of his reply, had nonetheless told his master the truth.
“Yes, my lord,” he had replied. “He says his information is one hundred per cent reliable. Valentin has gone to them.”
There had been a moment of silence, in which Valeri had felt the air thicken and begin to shimmer. Then Dracula had leapt up from the sofa on which he had been convalescing for almost three months, and let loose a bellowing howl of outrage that had blown out every window in the study, sending the glass tinkling on to the lawn outside in a jagged, glittering rain.
He had launched himself across the room, tearing at the walls as he went, gouging long claw-tracks in the old wood, and wrenched the huge oil-painted portrait of the three Rusmanov brothers down from its place on the wall above the fireplace. He had torn it to shreds, his hands little more than a blur, then hurled the pieces through the wall that stood between the study and the chateau’s grounds. The slivers of frame and ancient canvas had been thrown with such force that they had exploded through the wood, leaving a spray of tiny holes that let the cold night air in; it looked as though someone had loaded a shotgun with buckshot and fired it.
Now he was rampaging through Valeri’s bookcases, a dark blur, barely identifiable as human. Books and parchments, documents and maps – all were obliterated by his frenzied, tearing hands and nails, exploding into the air and falling slowly to the floor like drifting snow. As Valeri watched, completely dumbfounded by the news about Valentin, but filling rapidly with concern at the sight of his master exerting himself so terribly, the door to the study flew open and Benoît, the elegant French vampire who had served as Valeri’s valet for more than a decade, thundered into the room.
“My lord!” he shouted, over the noise of the carnage. “What on earth is happening in here? I was worried that you were being attacked.”
Valeri raised his hand towards the butler, and Benoît fell instantly silent. The two vampires stared into the snarling hurricane that was Dracula; as the shelves that had held his now decimated library were smashed to splinters, a fine rain of blood began to fall to the floor beneath Dracula’s blurred feet.
My lord, thought Valeri. This fury is unsustainable.
“Master!” he bellowed. The screeching, howling tornado spun to a halt, and Dracula stared at him, his eyes like jet black fire, steaming and burning in their sockets.
“You dare call for me?” he snarled, and took a step towards Valeri. “Like you would a dog? As I call for you? Your manners have deteriorated in my absence, Valeri. Perhaps a lesson is—”
Dracula stopped in the middle of his sentence, a strange look crossing his face. The ancient monster’s chest was hammering up and down, his face covered in sweat, and his arms and shoulders were visibly trembling with fury. Then he staggered backwards, and Valeri had time to notice a drip of blood fall from one of his master’s ears, before a thick gout of dark red blood exploded from Dracula’s nose, and his body began to fall apart.
Blood burst from his hairline, running in rivers down his face, as though a crown of thorns had been forced atop his head. Crimson liquid jetted from beneath his fingernails, and as his eyes lost their fire, they began to bleed too, dark red tears bubbling in the corners and cascading down his cheeks. Valeri watched, horrified, as a patch of skin on his master’s neck dissolved, so quickly and smoothly it was as though it had never been there at all, displaying the tendons, muscles and the pale knot of his spine through the widening hole. Then he moved, praying it was not already too late.
In a single stride he crossed the room and, without wasting even a second to give his faithful servant the apology he deserved, tore Benoît’s head clean from his shoulders with one smooth jerk of his arms. The head came free with an audible pop as the spine separated; the butler’s face was a mask of utter surprise.
Valeri hurled the decapitated head aside, and grabbed the headless torso of his companion. Blood was gushing from the open neck like water from a fire hose, splashing against the study’s high ceiling; Valeri shoved his hand into the gaping wound, feeling the warm blood soak his entire arm, and hauled together the erupting ends of the carotid artery and the jugular vein, holding them tightly closed in his superhuman grip. He lifted Benoît’s body effortlessly in his other hand, and flew to his reeling master.
Dracula was staring up at Valeri with a look of dying outrage on his face; one of his eyes had fallen in, and his face and neck were a sickening patchwork of missing sections of skin, dissolving muscle and disintegrating bone. Blood was coursing out of the bottom of Dracula’s tunic, and was pooling in huge quantities round his feet. His mouth was trying to work; Valeri could see the muscles moving clearly, but could not make out the words his master was trying to form. He ignored them; whatever Dracula was trying to say was not important now.
Valeri grabbed his master’s jaw, feeling with terrible panic and revulsion the way the flesh gave beneath his fingers, as though it was tissue paper. Dracula’s one remaining eye managed to look affronted at this invasion, but he had not the strength left to attempt to resist. Valeri pulled his master’s mouth open, realising with calm horror that he could see the study wall through the widening holes in the back of Dracula’s head, then shoved Benoît’s neck towards his master’s mouth, and released his grip on the throbbing, pulsing wounds.
Blood sprayed into Dracula’s mouth in a roaring crimson torrent. The effect was instantaneous; Dracula’s missing eye bubbled back into place, and both burst into flaming red. Valeri felt the flesh beneath his fingers begin to solidify, like cooling wax, and then his master’s hand flew up from his side, and pushed him away across the study. He skidded to a halt and watched as Dracula buried his face in the gushing flow of blood, and drank and drank.
Minutes passed.
Valeri stood silently, waiting to do his master’s bidding, as he had been all his adult life. Dracula sucked and bit and chewed at the stump where Benoît’s head had been; the butler’s neck and hands were quickly turning blue as blood left the cooling body in huge gulps.
Eventually, Dracula stood up, and let the servant’s body fall to the ground.
Valeri’s master’s face was appalling; it was coated thickly in blood, which dripped heavily on to the study floor. Dracula threw back his head and took a deep breath, then released it as a guttural groan of pleasure; he looked more like his old self than at any time since his resurrection. The air around him seemed to vibrate with power, as though he was at the centre of a strong electric field, and his arms and shoulders rippled with new muscle. He slowly lowered his head, and regarded Valeri with a wide smile. Then he seemed to remember the headless body lying at his feet, and gave it a curious look.
The butler’s head was lying where Valeri had thrown it, in the far corner of the study; it had landed upright, and appeared to be watching the events with a look of genuine hurt on its pale face.
Dracula glanced at it, at the body it had been attached to, then raised one of his feet, and stamped it through Benoît’s chest, crunching through the butler’s breastbone and squishing his heart to mush. With a series of low thuds, the body burst; there was so little blood left in it that it did little more than fold in on itself, before disintegrating beneath Dracula’s foot. The red in the ancient vampire’s eyes flared briefly with pleasure, before he turned his attention to Valeri, who had not moved.
“I cost you your servant,” said Dracula. “I apologise.”
“Do not trouble yourself, master,” replied Valeri, his voice thick with worry. “Servants come and go, as they always have.”
Dracula glanced around the study, and appeared to notice for the first time the damage he had inflicted upon it.
“Did I do this?” he asked, softly. He did not appear to be directing the question to Valeri, who remained silent. “I do not remember.”
The world’s first vampire walked slowly across the study, his head lowered with confusion. He sat down heavily on the edge of the chaise longue, and looked at Valeri.
“This group that your brother has allied himself with,” said Dracula. “They are the descendants of the men who pursued me?”
“Among others, master. They have become significantly more numerous than that, across the years, as I told you.”
Dracula nodded. “You know where they reside?” he asked.
“Yes, master,” replied Valeri. “I have the location of their headquarters.”
“And you have never seen fit to deal with them? You have never simply wiped them from the map?”
Valeri hesitated. “Master, Blacklight is both well-manned and well-armed. They monitor the skies around their base for a hundred miles in every direction, and the ground for ten. A frontal assault has never seemed strategically wise.”
Dracula laughed, a short snort of derision.
“You always were a coward, Valeri,” he said. “You never had any real stomach for battle, unlike your brothers. There was a reason I always placed you in charge of our defences; you never possessed the audacity necessary for a decisive attack.”
“I’m sorry I disappointed you, master,” replied Valeri, his jaw set firm.
The hurt in Valeri’s voice was audible, and Dracula’s face softened as he registered it.
“I’m sorry, my old friend,” he said, his voice low. “You never did, and I would not have you think otherwise. The battles we won, we won together. Always remember that.”
“I do, master,” said Valeri, proudly.
“Do you have the stomach for another?” asked Dracula. “Will you take a company of our kind, go to this Blacklight and do what needs to be done?”
“I will, master.”
“Bring me their commander, alive. I would speak with the man who presumes to hunt us. Leave no one else drawing breath. No one.”
“What of the other descendants of your enemies, my lord?”
“They are nothing to me,” said Dracula. “The men I would take revenge on are all dead. Kill them all, and let us close this unhappy chapter of our history.”
“I understand, master.”
Dracula nodded, then narrowed his eyes.
“I’m ordering you to kill your brother, Valeri,” he said. “Does this not perturb you?”
Valeri smiled at his master, a thin look of pure wickedness.
“Not in the slightest, master.”