Shimmer |✓|

//Haunted// Part 2

That night, the king of Vampires invited me to stay at his castle and enjoy dinner for two. My blonde-haired, blue-eyed muse once more, Dracula took his place at the head of the dining table. I lit the candles with a flick of my wrist, shimmering into the seat reserved for the queen, eyes on Dracula as Jeeves served the meal. A deer-blood, Cabernet Sauvignon mix in a crystal flute for Dracula, and steak on a Westchester plate for me–rare, the way I liked it. Fine dining at it's finest–yet all I could imagine was him eating me.

Elbow on the table, he brought his fist to his lips, and squeezed. 

"So what happened?" I paused to sip my wine, white to his red. "How did you wind up in Tidus' body--when? I mean, it wasn't while you and I were--"

"Of course not." Tidus shifted in his seat, visibly ruffled. "The change happened long before we met. I would never..." He cleared his throat, started over. "The person I am now would never do that to you. For as long as we have known each other, I have been me."

"You as in, the you masquerading as your son... What happened to him? What happened to you?"

Dracula set his glass aside, features darkening as he sat back in his chair, fingers tracing the rim of his drink. "My son had a good heart, like his mother, my wife. I didn't appreciate them when I had them--but he always tried to see the best in me. After his mother died, he sought to reverse the damage I had caused, both here, and in the Otherworld. He thought he could save me from myself." Dracula's blue eyes were overbright, his lips tightly set. "Tidus made a deal with a Warlock who performed a spell that switched our bodies."

"And it worked."

He nodded. "Everything changed when I lost Tidus--I changed."

I turned the wine stem, watching the candlelight strike the glass and turn it all to diamonds. "How did he die?" In a strange way, I had lost him as well.

"Someone mistook him for me--he was killed. And then Catherine took him, because she had mistaken him as well." His eyes slipped to onyx. He knocked his wine from the table and sat back in his chair, waiting for something else to come along that he could break.

"We'll get him back. I promise." Does he believe me? He must have, because his deadly eyes went tame again, black becoming blue. "She's going through all this trouble to get him back--obviously Catherine doesn't know who you really are."

Dracula shook his head. "She will if she raises my son."

"Then we won't let her. But I wont lie, I'd kill to see her reaction to the truth--that you've been alive this entire time, right beneath her nose..." I twirled my fork up close, observing the meat speared on the end. "She loves you. What made you stop loving her?"

"Not what, who. I fell for Catherine centuries after I lost my wife. I thought it was love, a replacement for what I lost... but it was just a crutch--Catherine and I, we enjoy the same hobbies."

"Oh, right--torture, maiming, blood baths, mass murder."

"Et cetera..." Dracula smirk revealed his amusement.

"Who else knows your secret?" Knowing him, Dracula was keeping the circle tight.

"Olyvia and my staff. No one else."

"Not even Hadrian?"

"I love my family, Naomi. But as I said before, not all of them are to be trusted."

"I'm more concerned with Catherine. The Leadership isn't having much luck tracking down her or her headquarters. Chandler says even if we made a door to the Otherworld, there's next to zero chance it would be the right door. Catherine's basically--a ghost."