The Red Rose

Chapter XXXIX

A couple of days passed, and I continued with my meditation. Griffin had arrived with Dracula. Lycaon watched attentively, and they exchanged tense glances.

"Good morning, my dear King Lycaon. Are you feeling comfortable today?" Dracula asked.

"I feel very well, thank you, Count Dracula. This place is perfect for me; you know I prefer austerity to opulence," he replied.

Dracula's meticulously drawn smile contrasted strongly with Lycaon's apparent tranquility, and the aura was charged with tension. Even Dorian seemed to feel uncomfortable.

"Where were we? Ah yes! My dear Miguel. Today is the big day! It's the day you'll meet your new tutor and help us resurrect her. I'm sure you two will be great friends."

Griffin lifted me up. I asked no more questions and gave Lycaon a look, who merely nodded his head. Dorian also seemed to follow me with his gaze as I walked in chains through the corridor. The procession took us to a room very different from the type of environment we had.

This place looked more like an amphitheater mixed with an autopsy room, all in gray. Through a small window, many vampires were looking down at me. Dracula carried the book I had seen in my dreams, although it was a bit different. Its cover was indeed a kind of black leather. It bore strange inscriptions and seemed worn. It wasn't its appearance that disturbed me, but rather the sensations it emitted. You know the feeling when you look into the depths of the ocean while falling into the abyss, and you begin to see unsettling silhouettes? Or what an astronaut would feel traveling out of control through empty space, with nothing but their suit keeping them alive? That's the sensation this book, the famous Necronomicon, caused me.

And I turned around, jumping with fright, I saw her. The body of a woman, or rather a kind of vampiress, or different parts of one glued and sewn together. The technique was much more refined than that used on Franky, and although the degrees of paleness changed for each attached body part, the body as a whole was pale. Her lips were full and well-formed, her wavy hair was long and bordered between blonde and red, her face was fine and symmetrical. Her nails were long and her hands delicate; it was a disturbingly beautiful body, with perfect contours, and it caused me revulsion to look at it in such a morbid way.

Her face was looking peaceful, almost sculpted, and she was covered with a typical surgical gown.

"So this is what you did with your three vampire brides, you disassembled them and stuck them together as if they were some kind of doll set," I said sarcastically.

"Dr. Frankenstein had fascinating concepts, exactly. But we can't take credit away from the efforts of Dr. Jekyll and the present Dr. Griffin; without them, we couldn't make a toast with your offering," Dracula told me. And there I realized that the wretches would celebrate by drinking my blood. If dealing with Carmilla wasn't enough already, I'll have a whole group of six vampires on steroids."

I could see Carmilla, Lucy, Mina, Ruthven, and Varney, seated at a table like judges in a tribunal, with the middle seat reserved for Dracula. There was a cup and a bottle of what was supposed to be my blood.

Varney wore a kind of suit, like an acolyte, and Dracula stood at another table where the book was, and opened it to a specific page. They made me lie down next to the woman's body, on a kind of double bed, and Griffin meticulously prepared several tubes that would pass between me and the woman's body. Timing everything, he began.

"3, 2, 1... Now," Griffin said, counting with his fingers.

Dracula began his speech saying:

"Dear friends, we are gathered at this moment for a day that will change the history of our species, and all of humanity. The time has come when we will not only be able to live openly, but we will also free humanity from its moralistic chains that slow down progress, and we will lead our civilization into a new era, where we will be free, truly free, no more nations, nor religions, nor laws, we will be one people united by the love of freedom!"