Chapter Text
Chapter 1 – For Want of a Wife
The Harker Institute…
Dracula looked up from the papers, that Frank Renfield was so insistent that he sign individually, when the door to his cell opened.
He was momentarily surprised that it was not Doctor Zoe Helsing that had come to see him once more but rather her lieutenant. What was her name again? Dracula’s keen gaze plucked the name from her credentials hanging from her lovely throat. He manufactured a smile from somewhere.
“Doctor Bloxam, a little ahead of schedule, it’s not yet eight o’clock.” Dracula straightened from his pose bent over the desk.
“Count Dracula, I have not come to release you.” Bloxam shifted a slim-line case under her arm. It appeared similar to the I-pad that Dracula had been given to play with but in a bookish cover. She dredged a smile herself, though in truth more a baring of teeth.
Still cross about the thumb being removed, he supposed.
“Oh? Come to offer me another taste? Such desperation.”
Bloxam snorted.
“No. I have been authorised to present a counter offer instead.”
“Authorised?” Dracula hummed. “By these mysterious backers of questionable morality, hmm?”
“My client has made it perfectly clear that he has no wish to continue to tolerate the hospitality of the Harker Institute.” Frank offered his insincere smile and pushed his glasses up his nose.
“Your client doesn’t know everything the Institute and indeed its backers have to offer.” Bloxam spoke from behind her teeth and Dracula thought it might have been adorable if it weren’t so tedious.
“Needles, sunlight and incessant pestering.” Dracula drawled. “I’ve sampled all I intend to.”
“The Institute is prepared to offer you that which you’ve always wanted.”
“Pre-packaged meals? I think not. I prefer my cuisine a la carte.” Dracula propped himself negligently against the table, shooing the paperwork back towards Frank who had to scramble to keep it in order.
“A bride of your choosing.” Bloxam smiled in what he supposed she believed was a sweet manner.
“Literally billions out there for the taking.” Dracula waved one clawed hand negligently. He would have his brides, he had to keep himself amused after all.
“You misunderstand, Count,” Bloxam removed the tablet from under her arm and flipped the cover open, “the Institute would offer you a bride that you have already chosen.”
Dracula frowned but found his curiosity piqued. He glanced at the clock, just turning eight, he had the time to indulge this posturing. He took the tablet from Bloxam’s injured hand, being sure to snag a talon on the pristine bandaging as he did so, and tapped on the white triangle on the screen. A matter of hours and he was already savvy enough to recognise a video when he saw one.
He watched events unfold upon the screen.
The picture was a patina of greens, blacks and whites. Similar to the camera he had handled upon the beach when he had first walked to shore. Night vision, they called it.
The scene was of a street, deserted in the depth of the night. Scarred buildings lined the road. A sign with a language that looked similar to Arabic leaned haphazardly over the doorway of what might have been a shop and Dracula realised he was watching imagery from a world away.
Twin pinpricks of white in the green heralded her.
The camera jostled, the operator catching sight of what Dracula had seen too and it zoomed in. Enlarging the image of the shadow that was unlike those surrounding it.
If Dracula had possessed the need to breathe, his lungs might well have hitched when the very familiar angles of high cheekbones, long nose and sable lashed eyes greeted him.
“Agatha?” Dracula frowned, wary of being fooled. He glanced up at Bloxam and found her smirking at him. He paused the video. “I do not like to be trifled with. You cheapen Doctor Helsing by having her play dress up in such a fashion.”
“Keep watching.” Bloxam had that infuriating smirk. The one that said she knew things he didn’t and –well- he couldn’t have that.
Dracula indulgently pressed play once more and ticked off the differences between the woman he could see on the screen, the one that looked so like his Agatha, and the descendent that had met him on the beach.
She stood tall and unfettered by mortal pains such as those which cursed the blood in Zoe’s veins. Her gaze was keen, calculating and regarded the world around her with that same sardonic mirth that had been so delightful to him. She had been a fraction of his age and had taken in the world with the very same jaded cynicism he had earned through centuries of exposure.
What might be Agatha did so now, her mane of hair curling down her back. Dracula watched as the film showed her spooling that hair back, tucking it into a voluminous hood that shrouded her familiar features in shadow. The twin stars of her slit pupils glowing still from within the depths of the hood.
The camera panned back, showing the street again. Dracula watched with interest as a convoy of vehicles rounded the bend in the road and started along. Dracula was a warlord out of time but he still recognised the trappings of a man of power on the move.
The lead and rear vehicle had men perched upon the backs of the squat cars, weapons bristling in every direction and their heads on a swivel. The vehicle travelling in the middle of the convoy had blacked out windows and no doubt had yet more soldiers secreted inside.
Agatha stepped out of the alleyway she had been hiding in. She took in the scene at a glance, noting the three vehicles, ducked her head and charged.
Dracula blinked, momentarily stunned, wondering what the hell she was thinking and realised what she was about when she tackled her target.
The first car.
Agatha hit the front grill of the military vehicle, both hands slamming down on the bonnet and crumpling the armoured plating there like cardboard. The car bounced downward, its suspension pushed to the limit and –when it bounced back up- Agatha ducked under the axle, hefting it with both hands and heaving with a meaningful bunch of her shoulders.
The car was thrust up on its back end, wheels spinning uselessly in the air and it toppled slowly on its tail for a moment before crashing backwards and landing with a crump on its roof. Blocking the street for the middle vehicle. Cutting off escape.
Agatha streaked away, faster than the camera could track in focus. The scene panned wider, searching for her, and zoomed in again when a blur of movement caught the cameraman’s eye. It focused again in time to see the last soldier of three being hauled from the back of a vehicle with a scream that did not register on the camera. No sound provided.
Gunfire erupted, muzzle flashes bursting magnesium bright on the night vision lens. The soldiers shot wildly into the dark. Plumes of mortar and shrapnel bursting from the buildings surrounding them, sparks flying from the hull of the toppled and crushed cars and Agatha was everywhere.
Men disappeared into the dark and did not return. Their screams cut off abruptly. Active soldiers were twisted to lifeless bodies, spinning crumpled and broken to the ground. Their heads twisted entirely off in some cases, blood pooling beneath them on the dusty street. A few simply broke and ran and Agatha let them leave, more focused on her main target.
She appeared in another blur, shadows clinging around her like ink in water. With a silent snarl, her fingers punched into the door of the vehicle that held her target to the second knuckle. She wrenched and the entire door was ripped from its hinges. Agatha ducked behind it, shielding herself from the hail of gunfire that erupted from within the vehicle, then contemptuously slapped the muzzle of the gun away from her.
The hand that held the weapon went with it and Agatha dragged the screaming soldier from the vehicle. Her eyes blazed, she snapped his neck with a casual movement. She dropped him in place, letting him land on his head, and swarmed into the car.
The whole vehicle bounced and jostled at whatever occurred within. The windshield was kicked out by a stray foot which must have belonged to Agatha for no human would have the strength and a body was hurled out after it.
A man in what had to be a general’s uniform was unceremoniously tossed onto the street, landing badly on one shoulder, one of his legs quite clearly broken.
Agatha prowled out of the ruined windshield and onto the hood of the car. She crouched there, a severed head held by the hair in one hand. She raised an eyebrow, smirking when the general tried to stand.
She tossed the head aside.
Agatha dropped down off the car, slinking down like a cat onto the street and she stalked.
Dracula was entranced.
She was beautiful. The most dangerous thing he had ever seen. Wondrous creature. She crept soundlessly after her injured prey, letting him whimper and drag himself hand over hand to attempt to flee her.
Her boot came down on his ruined leg and Dracula swore he felt the echo of the scream even if he could not hear it.
Agatha seized the man by the sash he wore over one shoulder and ripped him up off his belly. She wrapped her arms around his torso, her lips brushing his ear as she spoke. Whatever she said truly terrified him then because he began to struggle despite knowing that it was futile.
Agatha grinned, just for a second, taking a moment to enjoy her kill, then she struck.
Dracula was treated to the glorious sight of her eyes swirling, pupils blown wide, her fangs lengthening and her claws shredding the general’s uniform. She was perfect.
Her fangs bit deep, all the way to the gumline, in the meat of the general’s neck and Agatha savaged him, worrying the wound wider, tearing his throat clean open and gulping him down with deep, heaving, pulls.
It was in that moment of inattention on her part that they shot her.
Her body twisted, a dart pluming from one shoulder. She hissed, teeth bared, and yanked the projectile from her body but to no avail. Her legs were already buckling and she crashed down onto the street before she could even take one step in retreat.
Dracula snarled, his teeth bared and he lanced Bloxam with a look.
“As you can see, Agatha Balaur is alive –for lack of a better term- and well. That was a tranquiliser. She’s still alive. See? The team picked her up.” Bloxam nodded to the tablet which now had a crack racing across the screen courtesy of a careless flex of Dracula’s hands.
“Why?” He demanded, the veneer of the gentleman all but dust. The beast baring his teeth at her.
He did not like the sight of the men manhandling her into restraints, tossing her into the back of a truck with screeched out of apparently nowhere to pick her up.
They left her massacre where they had fallen. The whole operation taking less than a minute. Dracula noted on some level that –whoever these people were- they were competent enough to be watched. Preferably from a distance.
“Leverage, of course. We want you to stay.”
“And you will use Agatha to get me to toe the line?”
“She documented herself that you will go well out of your way in order to keep the company of one of your ‘brides’ and she was your last.” Bloxam shrugged a shoulder.
“What are your terms?” Dracula demanded.
“Sir- -!” Frank began but was silenced with a mere look from Dracula.
“I took the liberty of preparing a contract.” Bloxam tapped on her now cracked tablet and a PDF document appeared on the screen.
“Would you at least let me- -?”
“No.” Dracula accepted the tablet once more and scanned the document.
It mattered little. No human facility could contain him for long. Least of all one that wasn’t a home. He would get to Agatha and then they would leave. Together.
One way or another.
Dracula scrawled his signature on the bottom of the page and handed the tablet back to Bloxam.
“Take me to my bride.”
Bloxam smiled and it was her first true smile in Dracula’s presence.
“With pleasure.”
Later, An Undisclosed Location…
Agatha bolted back to consciousness, her claws unsheathing and her fangs baring all in one move.
It was only superior reflexes that saved her from clattering her skull off the low ceiling of the tunnel she found herself in.
Agatha snarled, cranking her neck in order to prevent a concussion and settled herself into a more observant frame of mind. Her instincts were helpful in certain situations but none of those situations involved…whatever the hell had happened to her.
Agatha rumbled a low and displeased sound when she sifted through her memories attempting to discern what had occurred. She had not put herself here, she knew that much. There was a sterile scent to this lair that she had never encountered in the natural world and certainly not in the mountains of Syria which was definitely where she had been.
Agatha examined the rock around her. Dark and slick. The earth beneath her had been placed there and she frowned at that. She rather preferred her mattress and cotton sheets but needs apparently must. Whoever had her, had been attempting to cater to her apparent needs. She would bet her left arm that the soil beneath her had hailed from her homeland of Holland.
Why did they always assume she was a vampire?
Agatha rolled into a crouch and started forward to where her nose told her the fresh air hailed from. She did not need to breathe often and could put herself into a state of suspended animation, but she did need oxygen. Even if it was at a ridiculously lower rate than a human.
Padding silently on her fingers and toes, Agatha prowled through the low tunnel and grunted low in her throat in satisfaction when she saw a flush of light not far away. She halted, scenting carefully, and her eyes narrowed when she thought she recognised that scent.
Deep and masculine, spiced. Testosterone personified.
Agatha raised an eyebrow. A male. Fabulous.
Resisting the urge to roll her eyes, Agatha started forward again. If there was some idiot leech at the other end of this, she was going to enjoy boxing his brains out of his ears and leaving him crumpled in her wake as she took herself home. She had no idea why the idiots kept kidnapping her but it was always the same. They mistook her for a vampire and attempted what might laughingly be referred to as courting behaviour.
She was not a vampire and never had been. Try explaining that to them though.
It always ended the same, they tried to claim her, she let them close, ripped out their throats and then went on her merry way.
She wasn’t precisely hungry and her weapons had been removed (smart, whoever they were) but she wasn’t helpless either.
She was very nearly always in the mood to tangle with an entitled male.
It was just a pity for them that it was never in the way they desired said entanglement.
Agatha stilled a moment when she rounded the bend in the tunnel and saw slick walls and a polished floor beyond. She was quite clearly in an underground facility. Whoever had captured her knew that she would destroy most other barriers to her freedom. The best way to cage her was to surround her by metric tonnes of rock that would take time for even her claws to cut through.
So far, this vampire was proving to be smarter than the others but she had taken on much fiercer monsters than any modern undead and she wasn’t about to be cowed by some callow youth thinking with their genitals.
Agatha listened intently and could hear nothing.
No…a small tap.
A…finger? Claw? Against glass.
Agatha stalked closer to the end of the tunnel and could see more of the room beyond.
The walls were padded and white. The floor covered in a soft but glossy foam covering. Simple furnishings dotted the room, a curtained off area in one corner which she guessed housed bathing facilities of some sort (not trapped by a complete monster it would seem) and a television on one of the walls.
She did hope they had Netflix, she needed to catch up with Star Trek.
Agatha slunk cautiously to the very edge of the tunnel and peered around to make sure nobody was clinging to the walls in her blind spot.
She stilled when she saw him.
A huge bear of a male, in the cell with her, his dark head bent to some task. Probably reading as the television was off. He sat with his back to her on the only available couch and Agatha scented him carefully and silently.
He did not yet know she was there.
“Ah, you’re awake!”
Agatha went completely still when the vampire dropped whatever he was doing and twisted to sling one arm over the back of the couch. Showing her his face and abruptly letting her realise why his scent was so familiar.
Agatha bolted out of the tunnel, wishing powerfully to be on her own two feet at full height for this. She stared at him.
Dracula.
Count –fucking- Dracula unfolded from the couch and grinned at her. Showing all of his many teeth. He tossed aside the tablet he had been using to read.
“Hello, wife.”
Agatha could only stare for the longest moment.
Then she said the only thing she thought appropriate.
“You have got to be fucking kidding me.”