Dracula: Jonathan's Story

Part 3: Mina

"I'm with child," Mina waited as long as she could before telling her parents. She discovered it on her trip to Hungary with Agatha three months before. She was sick every morning, and both thought it was seasickness. She'd been letting out her gowns since she returned, trying to buy time.

Daniel Murray shifted his glass around the table, silent. He stood up and stood in front of the window staring out the street where lamp lighters were starting their evening's work, hands clasped behind his back.

Noises filtered into the room through the crack in the door. A voice instructing the cook, the closing of a cupboard door. Soft conversation among the kitchen staff. Her mother's footsteps as she joined the two of them in the study, holding herself straight-backed standing between her daughter and husband. The clock standing in the hall gonged the hour; Daniel had been standing there 10 minutes. He turned back towards his daughter. "Say something..."

"Who is the father?" Four months had passed since Jonathan Harker left on his assignment.

"Jonathan," she answered. It was the night they got engaged. He proposed on one knee while they walked beside the river under the moonlight near his flat. They both didn't see a point in waiting if they were going to be together anyway for the rest of their lives.

They stripped each other with frenzied passion, determined to spend every last moment together before he had to board the ship to Transylvania. "Are you sure?" She'looked t him as he stood at the end of the bed still dressed from the waist down.

"Yes."

"He's not coming back," Daniel told his daughter. They'd been having variations on the same conversation since she'd returned.

"I know." Mina had given up the argument. Every time she closed her eyes she'd see that flicker of recognition break through as she took the habit off, allowing her blonde hair freedom. She felt his lips on hers, nibbling away much like he did the night before he left. "No... I will not. No... you have no power over me," he pushed her back towards Agatha and felt the other woman's arms secure around her preventing her from going to him.

"You cannot help him child..." she said as her arms tightened.

He was her beloved; struggling with illness thanks to whatever that ghastly creature did to him. What was he? The word was forever surrounded in fog; a being that survived on the blood of others, enjoyed eternal life with the looks and strength of youth. A v.. A v... she was tempted to snap her fingers now she'd remembered.

"I'm keeping the baby," she informed her father.

***

A vampire. That's what Dracula was, that's what he made Jonathan. Jonathan's memories started to return after he left the convent. Logic told him the return of the hazier memories meant he was getting stronger, the magic of his living life undoing itself. It gave him a new understanding of the count; immortality with only yourself for company was a lonely, maddening prospect. He knew he needed to do something to avoid that fate.

He laid in the marital bed next to Alexei and Maria sitting naked on a chair watching Jonathan's movements. Maria sensed it was over joined them on the mattress. She aged quicker than her husband. Her hair had turned grey, and was thinning on one side of her skull. Her face held wrinkles, and worries of a woman twice her age. She walked with a limp, forever yawning and unable to help with the household chores. It wouldn't be long before Alexei joined her.

"After I return," he suggested; if she wasn't asleep. He rose from the bed, and donned Alexei's old dressing gown to go downstairs.

He opened the front door, and found the waiting wolf in a seated position. "Good dog," he said leading it inside by the scruff of the neck. He barred the bedroom door as he'd left, leaving instructions they were only to move once his transformation was complete.

He lay flat on the ground on his stomach and pulled the image of a female wolf around him. The wolf approached him sniffing his body before pouncing on him.  He felt himself aroused, but did nothing to ease it. Sex with an animal; another moral barrier dissolved.  Jonathan's screams rode the line between agony and ecstasy. Little by little he sensed the wolf ceding control to him. 

When he opened his eyes and realized he was seeing the house from inside the wolf. He forced himself to unlock the bedroom before finishing the shift. Alexei appeared and stroked him between his ears in thanks. He led him downstairs and opened the door. He'd make his way back using the tunnel system.

He asserted his dominance over the animal by steering it through back alleys and across open spaces away from people. The wilderness settled around him as he entered the woods; there would be two meals tonight. One for him, and another as a reward for the animal. He used the sound of snores to guide him to the camp site occupied by a group of travelling traders.

He started with the one furthest from the campfire and pounced, planting a pleasant dream of a favourite whore as he fed on the man. He savoured the skin, and meat on the bones allowing the animal to feast as well.

"Have a second," Dracula's voice echoed in his head. He'd suppressed his hunger with Alexei and Maria, determined to be unlike his... sire as possible.  He let the appetite out, as a second trader arrived to see the source of the noise, and he pounced a second time.  He dragged the body by the first near the fire.

A third arrived to borrow cooking utensils. "You can never have too much Johnny," Dracula's voice said.   Jonathan pounced, letting his wolf take large bites out of the man's abdomen and stomach. The intestines stuck out as a grey-green mess on the ground, and the red blood congealing as it hit the ground. The man's cries echoed through the sky, and he pounced taking what was left of the blood. He dragged the body to his companions on the fire. He dragged sticks, and wood to fuel it with the hopes that it would burn high enough to burn the bodies. He'd have to send Alexei out to clean the rest of the campsite during the day.

'Your turn' he told the animal. The wolf bounded through the underbrush chasing the night-time critters. He feasted on squirrels, found a mountain lion cub. He circled back to the opening left open, yet covered by branches, and leapt through to the caves. From there it was a matter of making his way back to the house.

***

Maria cracked open one eye to the sight of a wolf ripping itself apart. Hands emerged from the front of its body clawing for a hold on the floor that he could pull himself out with. When after much grunting he did, he stood up leaving the wolf curled on the floor.

"He'll be fine after some rest," Jonathan assured her. He stood before her covered in blood, and guts. Stay laying down." He took both her hands laying belly to belly as he thrust, giving into his more primal lust. "Give in to your impulses boy," Dracula encouraged.

"I need you and Alexei to go and check the traders' campsite in the woods. A kiss on the forehead sealed his instruction.

He turned to the tub they'd brought in while he was gone full of cold water. "Out damn spot..." he muttered as he scrubbed the red from his skin. He soaked until he felt his eyes start to close, and stood. The water dripped off as if it were blood fresh from his kills. "And how do you feel about that bride?"

He felt detached, as if it were another person that did those deeds. In a way it was; a wolf killed those people, not him. "I do what I need to survive," he whispered. "Ttsk, tsk Johnny how you've changed already and not even a year old," Dracula answered.

Jonathan clapped his hands over his ears to shut him out. Instead it was eerie laughter. "My blood flows through your veins. I'm always with you Johnny," Dracula said.

Up next? A visit with the title character himself