Chapter Text
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When you reach the end of the world, the only thing left to do is go back home.
The creature stood knee deep in the snow of the icy hell on the top of the world, watching the ship carrying his maker’s body cut through the arctic waters like steel through skin. Perhaps part of him hoped - or worried - that Victor would be struck with the same curse as the monster he created. Granted a twisted, immortal life, doomed to fall into blackness but wake to blistering light again and again until the lines between blurred into smeared ink.
That perhaps, Victor would rise from his resting place under the blanket of a glass filtered moon and run to the rear of the ship, eyes wild and searching, calling out to his child as the harsh wind snatched his words to catch one last glimpse of his creation before the uncaring ocean chartered him away.
What was worse - to live knowing his creator was out there, given freedom by his child’s forgiveness, the both of them doomed to walk the world as warped reflections of each other until God finally decided to grant them mercy; or to live, certain in his creator’s demise, lightened by one final moment of affection he’d so desperately craved, but burdened by a loneliness so heavy it would make Atlas weep with sympathy?
Yet his creator did not appear at the top of the ship, and it sailed on, the only sight greeting him that of the fearful, but reluctantly grateful faces of the crew until they, too, were swallowed by the horizon.
Home.
Had he ever known it? He knew the word, certainly, remembered with vivid recollection the card held in the blind man’s curled fingers - the image of a cottage with two windows and a tall chimney; but the family had used the word to mean much more than the space they lay their heads down in every night. For them, it also meant safety and company and warmth - a place that felt like part of you, a collection of memories and experiences, worn with the fingertips of anyone who had ever touched your life.
Was home the waterlogged, blood-stained floors of the basement Victor had once kept him in? Years ago, the scent of slow decay and copper had been comforting, the cold air winding through the pillars and brushing his face almost like a soft caress.
But iron shackles, beatings, and fire had destroyed that home, turning the first consistency in his freshly born life into a nightmarish pit.
Was home the forest, amongst God’s creatures, simple minded and innocent, living away from humanity and surviving immortality alongside the Earth? The short comfort he’d experienced there had been kind, and perhaps he could have been content, if he had not learned language, had not discovered ways to express the concepts of loneliness and despair.
The animals of the forest could not ease his sorrow, could not extrapolate on the burden of his existence. And despite their lack of judgement, their inability to hate, he felt monstrous even among the trees and animals, beings created from nature with purpose, while he was born from nothing but man’s fragile ego and constant battle with God.
No. The closest he’d come was his time peeking between the gaps in the wall, watching the family live their lives, create their home, and then when they left, his oh so brief time with the blind man. But even that - the weeks and months that felt like minutes, and the longer he lived, would morph into seconds of a long eternity - had been on borrowed time. Even if he had stayed with the blind man, with his kindness and his patience, instead of leaving to pursue a delusion of home; even if he stayed, and the wolves had not come, once the family returned, the peace would have been broken.
He knew deep down, in the stranger’s heart that pumped blood through his body, they never would have accepted him, even if the blind man had been unharmed. It would always end in him lying in a pool of blood, staring up at the barrier to Heaven, wishing when his eyes finally fluttered shut, they would never open again.
Home was nowhere. Maybe the concept did not exist for things like him, born of thievery and made for nothing. Perhaps home was only gifted to God’s creations, and man’s was left to wander as eternal punishment for the crime of being born.
With no compass, or direction, the creature turned and walked in the opposite direction of his creator’s retreating body, not knowing what else to do but keep moving as Victor could no longer and as the Earth would continue to do.
He wandered until he found a ship and snuck inside, huddled between barrels of wine and scarcely enough food to feed the dozens of men whose footsteps on the deck lulled him into uneasy sleep for an uncertain number of days. Strict rations made trips below deck to the storage room infrequent, so he remained hidden for the duration of the journey until the music of the ocean was replaced with the noises of life.
He escaped the ship as the sound of a relieved cheer rippled through the crew, dropping into the icy water which stung his flesh but did not harm him. He clawed his way onto land, sand digging into his fingernails, until he lay like Hell’s forgotten child across the ground, chest heaving with stolen breath he did not need.
He allowed himself a moment of stillness, of sensation, before rolling over and getting to his feet. His boots left large footprints with every step he took, the only proof of his existence here doomed to be washed away with the incoming tide.
There was no way to tell how far or long he walked, hoping a purpose would fall upon him. He stuck to colder places where his hood and big coat would not be given a second glance. Although he did not crave food, he did crave a reprieve from the loneliness that settled in his bones like the ache of the cold. When he could get away with it, he walked through small, frozen towns, bundled up enough to hide anything the humans might fear and sat in taverns.
He would steal enough money to buy a drink and sit in the far corners, listening to the chatter of humanity, whispered secrets or boastful rants in languages he understood and many he did not. It would never truly feel like belonging, but it could feel like a shadow of it - in the warmth of a busy tavern filled with the joyous hum of voices and music, he could almost pretend to be one of them.
It was far from a purpose, but it was a pattern, one the creature indulged again and again until the day he came across a town stranger than any he had ever seen before.
In a shadowy hillside resided a town where the very air rang with a low thrum of fear. Every window was boarded up, strung with cloves of garlic, etched with crucifixes and wards of protection. No music leaked out of tavern doors, only harried whispers and the swishing of long cloaks upon the ground as the humans scurried from one building to the next, throwing cautious glances over their shoulders.
His arrival was met with immediate distrust. The moment his foot touched the ground past the first darkened home, he felt the glares from a hundred eyes burning holes all over his skin. He felt how he imagined the blind man’s family might have if they knew of his spying. As he walked through the center of town, he heard the snapping of locks and mumbling prayers.
Covered as he was, he suspected their paranoia was less about him and more about the darkness that seemed to be permanently settled over the town. Perhaps they treated all newcomers like this, as if their very presence was a herald for something evil.
His attempts to find somewhere to sleep for the night were hastily rejected one by one by people with eyes burned wide with horrors, clutching crosses and reeking of incense. No amount of money could sway their shaking heads and closed doors, until the creature had reached the end of the town with no success.
He shivered against the cold of the night - it would not kill him, but it would make for a miserable sleep haunted by dreams of falling into the arctic ice, frantically fighting for a way out before the depths pulled him under.
Further down the dirt road, deeper into the dark and past the trees, he spotted what seemed to be a sort of farm with a large structure made of straw. So late at night, it was doubtful anyone would be checking on any animals inside - it might provide an acceptable place to lay down for a few hours before moving on.
The creature approached the home with slow, cautious steps, scanning for any sign of movement. The windows of the house were dark, adorned with the same superstitious ornamentation of the town. As he broke the treeline and took a few steps towards the straw building, he heard a low growl, like thunder creeping across the sky. He spun around to see a pack of wolves peeking between the gaps in the trees, as wide as the trunks with bared teeth and maws dripping spit.
The leader of the pack stopped a few feet away from the creature, throat rumbling with threat. The creature braced himself and bared his own teeth, preparing for any sudden moves from any of the wolves, anger curling in his gut as his mind wandered back to the blind man’s sudden demise.
After a long, silent moment, the wolf snarled, shaking its head violently. The wolves behind it cowered, moving a step back into the forest. The creature untensed his muscles, confused, but wary at the retreat.
“My wolves fear you, it seems.”
The creature turned back to face the house, panic shooting up his spine. Where there had been nothing but an empty stretch of snow now stood a man, clad in lavish clothes of red and black, a spill of wine on a white table cloth. In the dark of the night, his pale skin reflected the moon like a porcelain doll.
He seemed very much like a portrait of a man - containing all the right brushstrokes to convey the image, but lacking any soul behind the eyes, as if you were to strip away the layers of paint, you would find nothing but a blank canvas.
The creature had never once looked at another being and felt the sense of unease humans always had around him - until now.
Staring at the man - meeting the intense blue eyes and seeing them not as mirrors of the soul but a void of eternity - the creature was struck by a fear he had only felt a few times in his life; once as the fire threatened to swallow him whole, twice when Elizabeth’s body went cold in his arms, thrice when Victor’s hand finally went limp. All were the fear of loneliness - dying alone, being alone, wandering the world alone.
This fear was new. This was a fear of recognition, of knowing monstrosity existed outside of yourself, you were not its only keeper. Whatever this man was, he was not human, and the creature felt emotions he had no words for attempting to crawl up his throat and battle for space on his tongue.
“They say you smell of wolf blood, drenched into your very skin,” the man continued when the creature said nothing, lips moving but body as still as the snow on the ground. “That you must have killed many of their brethren. Is this correct?”
The creature wanted to look over his shoulder to see if the wolves still lined the edge of the forest, ready to attack, but he didn’t dare take his eyes off of the man. “Yes,” he said with caution, unsure if honesty was the correct path to take.
“Fascinating.”
Between one blink and the next, the man appeared suddenly closer, only a foot in front of the creature, who reared back with wide eyed surprise. Before he could increase the distance between them once more, the man reached out and grabbed the creature’s arm, clutching it with a grip strong enough to shock the creature into stillness.
The strength of his hold did not match his average frame, but even without the restriction, the creature felt he could not move underneath the heavy gaze of the strange man.
“You are fascinating,” the man said, emphasizing the last word like a prayer, like a confession, drawing the creature in with the spark of interest dancing behind his blue eyes. “Your blood runs through your veins in a chaotic symphony.”
And then the creature saw them, protruding from the man’s gums like twin daggers - a pair of sharp, fanglike teeth. He stared in awe, mystified by the new sight. “You are no mortal,” the creature said, eager for answers.
“No," the man agreed, grin pulling at the edges of his blood red mouth. “I am a vampyre."
Vampyre. The creature had read the word before in folk tales - stories of immortal demons who drank the blood of innocents to sustain their unholy existence.
“And you?" The vampyre prompted, gaze darting across the exposed strip of the creature’s face. “What manner of being are you?"
“A monster." The creature had no other word for his existence than the one hurled at him in anger so often.
“No," the man said with a firm shake of his head. “If I condemned you for being a monster, I would then have to turn that blade upon myself.”
“A mockery of God," the creature spat, bitterness creeping across his words like rot.
“Does God suffer mockery? Either God sits in Heaven, blinded by the sun and deafened by the chorus of his angels, ignorant to our sin, or. . .”
“Or?
“He permits it.”
The creature pulled his arm back with enough strength to dislodge the man’s hold, worried the impious words falling from his mouth would crawl across their touching bodies and find home on the creature’s own tongue.
“Blasphemy,” the creature said with all the certainty of a man staring into the mouth of a dark cave and claiming no danger awaited inside. “I am man’s creation, given life only in the ridicule of death. To snatch souls from God’s paradise and trap them on Earth for eternity."
“Life created from death. Immortality at the price of many souls. You see, I am the very same.” The man curled back his lips, revealing the full length of his fangs. “I take life from humans so that I may live. I drink their mortality from their blood, and I walk the Earth for years after their bodies decay into the dirt. Would God allow this if he did not desire for it to happen?”
The creature shook his head, taking another step back. The stranger’s words were all too tempting to hear, as enticing as the apple Eve watched sway with the winds of Eden. Another being who dismissed nature’s laws of death? Another lost soul, wading through the rivers of time in perpetuity, who instead of stumbling across the stream with uncertainty, stood braced against the battering waters unswayed? It seemed impossible, forbidden, all too easy to desire.
“What is your name?” The man continued as silence followed his words, resoundingly loud in the quiet stretch of snow covered dirt.
The creature’s brow furrowed at the question. Victor had never called him anything but monster or child or son. In his own head, the way he referred to his own being was formless, conceptual, using “I” and “me” - another way Victor had failed him, it seemed.
That confession, however, made in front of this strange man who appeared so confident and sure of himself in the curse they both shared, felt impossible. How would the creature look to this man at the admittance? Unsure, diffident, a child looking back over his shoulder at a father who no longer stood behind him for guidance on how to answer.
After years of loneliness, did he have no sense of self? Was he still tethered, as if by an ungodly umbilical cord, to Viktor’s sanction of his being? The shame could not be given voice.
“Adam,” he said, tasting the name like blood on a bitten tongue - a stinging pain, but then, the bright burst of copper, familiar in a way very little else was. God’s first man - not his first creation of life, the Earth, the angels, the stars in the sky - no, his first intention. Everything else created for man, for man to enjoy, for man to explore - and Adam was man.
The creature was not man, but he could create his own intention, separate from Victor’s mad delusions or ideas about what he should have been.
“Adam,” the man repeated, a knowing glint in his eyes, a flash of red passing across the blue. “I am Count Dracula. There are many things I feel we should discuss, but perhaps not here, where the mortals may come to disrupt our conversation. Would you accompany me back to my castle where we can speak freely?”
Adam clenched his fingers, uneven nails digging into the meat of his palms. His very soul lurched forward towards the offer, eager to be in the company of a kindred spirit, a being like himself who could understand, even more than Elizabeth, perhaps, the void in his stolen heart.
His body, however, remained still - it remembered the heat of fire, the stinging pain of the rod, the agony of bullets ripping through his skin. His entire existence, trust had led to nothing but pain or heartbreak, or some horrible mixture of both. Dracula’s immortality did not necessarily exclude him from being able to dole out the cruelty of mortals. Even his undying heart would not be able to survive the pain of betrayal from a creature so like himself.
Man’s evil he had become to expect; he was unsure if he could handle any other.
“You are afraid,” Dracula said, splaying his hands out on either side of his body. “I understand. I see a hundred lifetimes of pain in your eyes, terror so deep it feeds on your insides. You need not be afraid of me, I have no intention of harming you. Take comfort in this, if you must - I suspect I cannot kill you, and you cannot kill me. I will not force you to come, but I would enjoy your presence.”
Dracula turned, cape unsettling the untouched snow, and whistled. Behind him, Adam heard the sound of a dozen feet flee into the forest, and then the echoing, fading cry of a wolf. After a moment’s pause, Dracula spoke again over his shoulder. “Have you ever felt a loneliness so profound it made your ribs ache for your lungs to expand, filling up the empty spaces in your body, so that it might feel for a second as if the void in you is gone?”
“Yes,” Adam confessed, as if this isolated space they had formed between the trees and the mortal’s home was a cathedral, and the stars were the eyes of a priest who could ask God to forgive his every sin.
Dracula nodded, once, and then walked forward, footsteps hardly making a sound. Adam stood still, watching him walk for his life’s longest moments, before his feet moved forward without him, as if possessed by the souls of all those who had died to bring him into existence.
If the loneliness of the immortal had a cure, he would follow Count Dracula into Hell itself for just a glimpse at the possibility.
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