The Unholy Night

Chapter XXI

"What did you think I'd say to that? Does a scorpion sting while fighting back? They strike to kill, and you know I will"

- mad woman by Taylor Swift

Jonathan was concerned he was beginning to look like an old man. 

Of course, the critique of his looks was mostly to pass time while he, Seward, and Van Helsing awaited the return of Arthur and Quincy, but he couldn't help feeling that it must be true in some way or another. 

He ran his hands over his fast, examining lines that had not nested there the night before. He combed his hair background, and the few follicles that came away in his hand seemed horribly gray.

That wife of his. She would be the death of him.

Van Helsing was going on about something or other, but Jonathan wasn't listening too intently. It was background noise while he got lost in his own thoughts. 

"I have studied, over and over since they came into my hands, every paper relating to this monster, and the more I have studied, the greater the need to stamp him out becomes. All through these writings are signs of his advance that any fool might have put together, and yet there was a failure in that respect. These show not only his power, but his knowledge of his power, which is far more dangerous. As I learned from the research of my friend Arminius in Budapest, Vlad Dracula was, in life, a most wonderful man."

As your narrator, it seems a good time to point out that Dracula was not Vlad the Impaler. I have no idea how Dracula came by the name or the castle or any of it, but Vlad the Impaler remains an interesting piece of history, not an undead fiend, as cool as that might be. 

This did not stop Van Helsing from waxing on about him, as Van Helsing would.

"Soldier, statesman, and alchemist - the latter of which was the highest development of scientific knowledge at the time. He had a mighty brain, a learning beyond compare, and a heart that knew no fear and no remorse. He dared even to attend the Scholomance, and there was no branch of knowledge of his time that he did not essay." 

It is also questionable exactly how much Van Helsing knew about Vlad the Impaler, or how accurate his information was, but I am certain the man never attended any school run by the Devil. 

"Well, in him, the brain powers survived the physical death, though it would seem the memory was not all complete. In some faculties of mind, he has been, and is, only a child."

Okay, so, as your narrator, I do have to clear some things up. 

Dracula's mind, as long as I knew him, never functioned like that of a child's. He was an extremely smart man, which made him even more dangerous, and I will concede that, despite my hatred of him.

Van Helsing did not believe this, for one (or both) of two reasons.

The first is that he had minimized Dracula's intelligence in his mind in order to make him a monster he had a chance of destroying.

The second is that he had an extremely xenophobic and racist point of view and didn't believe someone from my part of the world could have that brainpower. 

Probably a mix of both. And that is all I will say for now, because I was not there and am not supposed to be narrating this part. 

Jonathan was startled out of his soliloquy by the last sentence, and said in a defeated kind of waiting, "And this is all arranged against my wife."

Now, this is where Van Helsing spouted more of his trash about Dracula having a brain akin to a child's, and I think I'll pick up the story again where it stops.