u/LOWMAN11-38

The assistant watched the sun set blood red on the doomed little village. From on high, within one of the towers of Castle Dracula. It bathed the little commoners  place with the last of its lurid rays as it shot the sky with flame. Then it departed with one final flashing wink. The assistant kissed it goodbye, blew it away on his hand. 

And smiled. 

A sound then carried and traveled through all of the silent ancient cobwebbed castle: The familiar creak of hinges and wood… the opening of a coffin. A casket lid softly closed, as it was guided down by phantom hand… his master's power. 

The Countess. 

The dread sun had been banished for another night for her majesty, his great mistress, the master sorceress of the dark, now the princess of shadow-black. She was unrivaled now. The stupid little peasants hadn't a chance now, not a chance in hell. 

For the Countess herself must now be master of such a dominion… she must now control all hellfire and flame as she now commanded the wild and the beasts within it. 

And the town below… through fear and terror, they were now her subjects. 

Subjugated and made prostrate to her power, she took from them as she pleased, when and where she so desired. They all fell victim to her magic and her might. Her ripping drinking fangs of mutilation, a hunger unsated and boundless that nonetheless held them all prisoner. Such hunger was an abattoir disease…

All the pitiful dirt farmer villagers would soon fall and bleeding, be held in the ripping necromantic fangs of her mighty jaws, beautiful. And now bestial. Vulpine. Powerful. 

Soon they would all feel her bloodlusting mouth about their throats, they would all come to her as she nightsong bade them. Commanding them, the royalty that she truly was and that coursed through her unholy veins. 

She was part undead. Thanks to the magic. And the ritual of the biting chair. 

And the fangs of the Count. Whose castle they now held. 

And himself… he allows himself this small and private boast. It would never be appropriate to brandish it before the master, his beloved Countess. 

She entered the chamber where he dwelt, watching the last of the sun’s light, diminishing as it had fled, fade to a darker blue then die as it became truer black. 

Stars like jewels in the ebon curtain came to life as his great master came from behind and stood beside him. Her presence was intoxicating. Powerful. 

She might not ever know how much he truly loved her, it was not his station and with a bitter heart he knew that, but to be by her side and to aide her in domination of the pathetic world was enough. 

The closest he would likely ever get to being her lover. Only in his most private fantasies. Only in his wildest dreams. Secret. He musn't trouble the Lady Zaleska with such trivialities. They were beneath her. He knew that. 

“Has our little one awoken yet?" Zaleska asked the assistant. 

The assistant said with a bow and a smile: "No, no. You know how little ones can be. Slow risers. Not quick to take to feet and task, but she'll learn. She'll get better.” He bowed again, saying: “She has you, master, to look to for example. The finest lady of shadows that has ever doth existed on the face of this accursed earth.”

Zaleska smiled. Pleased. He was such a good and loyal man.  

A little voice went shrill at the entrance to the chamber. 

Carmilla shrieked with dark joy. 

“Yes! Yay! The sun has died again! The Lord's Eye has gone blind for another curtain of night and now we get to go out and play!" 

Zaleska and the assistant looked to the little one as she jumped up and down in the doorway with savage glee. So proud. 

Carmilla ran up to the pair, her new dark guardians and bastard companions of the shadowland. She jumped up and down some more. Cheering. Screaming. Shrieking. Squealing. Part small child joviality and part terrible aggressive animal bestial shriekings. 

She looked up to them again, to Zaleska. She worshipped her. Her undead uncanny gaze held pure corrupted adoration for the Countess. Her great master. 

She said again, asking this time like a small impatient child really wanting something. In part, she still was. But the other part, darker and more dominating now… that part tainted everything that the small demon animal in childshape did from then on. 

“We do, right? Now that the sun is dead and God is blind to the little sows, we can go out and play with them, right? Oh! … I want to so badly, master! We do now, right?”

"Yes, my servant. Yes, my child. We must. We are creatures that live to go out and play in the dark." Zaleska said soothingly, reassuringly. 

Carmilla cheered! Then catching herself, restrained her excitement, then gave a courtly curtsey and bow, saying: “Thank you, master. Thank you, Countess. Your power and wisdom are unrivaled." 

The wolves outside once more began their nightly song of predator's chase and claim, they began again this night like all others as of late, howling their music of blood and flesh and flame. Renewed. 

The children of the dark were all revived now and they took to the night once more, empowered with unholy rage. 

But as the vampires and their assistant prepared for another nocturnal hunt, another dark night of feeding on innocent human prey in the village below…

… many rivals, made, were approaching.

…

The bloodbags writhed in the dirt. The three that were left. Frankenstein's massive body-part patchwork nosferatu creation watched them from the mouth of the cave where it rested and protected itself from the sun. 

It had known, naturally, innate, it had known to fly from the face of the sun. It had known when it was born from the slab by lightning and black magic that the sun was its enemy. 

Known. In its blood. Knowledge that was animal down to the bone. Patchwork bones… sawn, broken… reshaped… fitted together into new more powerful form and size like godly and powerful puzzle pieces. 

Remade. 

Frankenstein’s nosferatu monster sniffed the air… blood… fear… and… better yet. 

The flight of the sun. 

Darkness returned and the black lands came alive again with fog. Great drifting veils of phantom white. The creation stepped free of the cave and closed the few steps to his captive bloodbags, now down to an unholy three.

He picked up the misshapen one. Almost dead, almost empty. Weak pathetic little thing…

It groaned as he sank his teeth into the softest part of the wretched little twist of flesh, the only part of the rotten little fruit the creation deemed worthy to put his newborn lips to. 

The tender meat beneath the hollow crook of the underarm. Just above the large artery there. 

He sucked and drank deeply and the little deformed man begged God and the devil and the creation itself as he slowly felt the life being pulled from him, with a savage hungry tug. All throughout his bent and mismanaged frame. 

He also cursed the name of Frankenstein again.  Henry Frankenstein and all of his fathers and sons and all of the women too! the bastards! 

Curse them! 

Egnaw knew he was going to die. He only hoped Frankenstein’s end would be even more painful. 

But the mad doctor might be dead already. Still unconscious since the many days since the night of the experiment and the towers fall. 

Collapsed. Explosion. Sabotage by the hand of the rival Doctor Praetorius. 

The bastard. 

The creation ripped its mouth away after a final draw off the bloodbag and chewed. Egnaw screamed. But it wasn't prolonged like it might be with anybody else. The little man servant slave was becoming even more attuned and accustomed to unyielding pain. In unyielding volumes. 

The creation threw him back into the dirt with the other two. Still chewing. 

It swallowed. 

And then howled at the moon. Crescent and sickle tonight. Like a curved scythes blade.

Then throaty and gurgling he spoke once more. The only word it seemed to want to speak since the day of its unnatural birth. 

“Frankenstein…!” 

Egnaw cringed. He hated the sound of its wretched voice. He remembered handling such vocal chords alongside the mad doctor in another lifetime, not long but so long ago and far away… 

The fortress stone of jagged rocks and what they held for him were near, but the creation slightly altered course. Veering ever so slightly in its direction for the Carpathian Mountains. It had caught a newer fresher scent. Closer. 

A man. Moving fast. On horseflesh. 

A rider. 

…

He moved with one thought dominating all else. Find him. Find the vampire killer.

Find Professor Van Helsing. 

Florin moved with near suicidal speed. His horse beneath him was strong and durable. But nonetheless, they were both growing more exhausted. Yet he feared to stop and make camp. He feared whatever may be stalking through the night. It may be the same evil that now lay siege to his little village. 

Darkness spreads as a shadow does grow…

he must be careful. 

But then suddenly the beast beneath him came to a near dead stop. Nearly throwing him as its hooves skidded and dug shallow trenches in the black earth. 

The horse was skittish. Prancing and refusing to settle beneath him. Refusing to go any further. 

Florin, already frustrated with the urgency of his task, began to chide and curse the animal. Trying to berate and spur him on forward to the next farm or village. More children or others back home in town could be dying right now as his stubborn stupid horse just danced and behaved foolish-

Snap! 

A branch or twig or something else broke in two in the night all about him. Somewhere in the dark. Florin shut his lips. And fell silent. 

Instantly gripped with dread. Fear mounting higher into terror. He was suddenly aware, certain that he was not at all out here alone with his horse. Something else was out here too. 

Something moving. 

He suppressed his galloping heart of terror and forced himself to listen. Listen for movement in the encompassing dark wood. 

His horse grew more anxious. It wanted to be off, to flee. 

Everything inside both rider and his steed told him to run. 

Run. Now. 

Fast. 

“Stop, now, you!" Florin hissed at his horse, “We've no time for trifling games!" 

“Your horse is smarter than you are, rider." 

Florin, shocked, almost let out a wail, but before he could the voice from out of the dark came again and calmly said. 

“Don't. Please. Don't be afraid. Don't scream. You'll get us all killed." A beat. “Just be quiet." 

Florin whispered to the dark: “Who are you?"

“Dismount and move slowly. To the bushes. Leave your horse. There is something out here." 

“Who are you, what're you talking about and why should I trust you?" Florin asked again. 

“There is something out here, my friend. I'm just a fellow traveler, and I've no wish to see another man butchered." A beat. “Now do as I say, or to hell with you." 

Florin considered it a moment… and then considered the surrounding dark. It seemed filled. With something hurtling. 

Something bounding like an eager jungle cat hunting sure prey. 

Florin quickly dismounted, grabbed his saddlebags and then ran to the voice as it called out once more. He scrambled in the bushes with a large dark gypsy man with long black hair, beneath swashbuckler scarf wrapped round his crown in a skullcap. He looked severe and he was desperately clutching something in his calloused hands. 

A rosary. A small wooden crucifix attached, dangled from the tear drop center. 

The gypsy looked at Florin with wide eyes filled to the whites with all of the night and its superstitious and terrible wonder. He brought a finger to his lips, in a gesture to bade the young man quiet. Then he pointed out into the night to tell him to watch. 

Florin did. 

The horse, reins tied to the branch of a nearby tree, was now more nervous and jumpy than ever. Florin had never before seen a trained and broken horse behave so strangely and so wild. 

And then it came out of the woods. Out of the night. Large and hulking. Eyes twinkling twin stars of blood red jewels in all of the surrounding oppressive dark. Set in a stitched up grotesque patchwork of a face that was both human and rat like, commingled and blasphemously mixed. A terrible mouth opened and moonlight glinted off the drooling tendril strands of bestial salivation and rabid animal slobber turning them into long translucent jewels of glass in the lunar glow. A pair of fangs, bone-white, gleamed amongst the rest of the mouth of rotten black. A miasma of decay and fecal stench, pungent and strong filled the cold space. Warming it with powerful foul and fetid odor, the heat of death. 

He growled. Seethed. It said a name then. One Florin swore he'd heard somewhere before. 

“Frankenstein…!”

The horse was in hysterics now. Its eyes rolling in wild terror as it kicked and reared and pranced in a frightful panic that only the animal can know. It hurt Florin's heart to see the beast as such.

What came next was much worse. 

One of the large powerful arms of reanimated muscle, rippling beneath pale blue corpse flesh, shot out and found the poor beast’s throat, ripping it out in a sudden blur of crimson and hide and tearing discolored claw. A heavy steaming gout of dark animal blood shot forth from the fresh open wound which also belched steam into the night. The large rotting patchwork nosferatu brought its face into the warm red dark cord of horse blood and began to catch it in its wide open mouth. Gulping. Lapping. Tonguing with wild abandon the red warm cord-stream. 

As the horse suddenly stilled, then wobbled, then fell against the tree to which it was tethered and began to sag down to the earth, the creation came in, bathing its horrid face in horrible animal scarlet baptism as its mouth closed the distance and met the fresh wound ripped from the large stout neck. 

Florin from the bushes, with his host of gypsy saviors, could hear deep heavy gulping – deep heavy pulls of drinking, and the crunch and relish of strenuous chewing. Raw meat being devoured as the throat worked heavily to pull in thick viscous liquid. His stomach lurched and he nearly vomited but he held it together. It was awful but he could not pull his eyes away from the scene. Neither could his fortunate band of gypsies host. They all watched. Spellbound in the most terrible way by that which is so arresting and magnetic because it is so appalling you cannot actually believe your very eyes. You cannot believe it is actually happening. 

The vulpine manmade nosferatu creation took its fill, then with great prodigious strength, it threw the dead weight of the horse over one mighty shoulder, and then bounded off into the night. Heavily breathing through gurgles and throaty laughter. 

Florin waited til he was sure the thing was gone, then he thanked the Lord aloud and crossed himself. 

The gypsies gave their own prayers of thanks in another language the rider didn’t understand. But he was sure he nonetheless knew and felt every word. 

Yes. Thank the Lord on High. God Help Us. 

Carefully and quietly they arose from their hiding place together. 

The man who’d saved him spoke first. 

“Now you know to be careful in the night, fellow traveler. But now you are without a horse. Come with us, on our wagon, we will give free ride to your village.”

Florin said kindly but firmly: “Thank you but you don’t understand, I’ve just come from there and I’ve been searching the past many nights, I must get back on my way… but I’ve no idea where to look…”

The rider fell despondent. The sight of the creation and its feasting on his ride still very vivid and fresh in his mind. And he’d been thus far so fruitless in his hunt. Aimless. Nowhere. He had no idea of where to go. 

“Come with us,” the man, seeing the young one’s crestfallen face said again, “we can give you horse and maybe direction.” A beat. He held out his hand, “We shall see.”

Florin looked up into the weathered gypsy face and took the traveler’s hand. 

And away they went. Back to the gypsy camp. Not far off. 

Once there Florin saw that the band of travelers were actually a family. A father, mother, three sons, four daughters, a babe, and an old woman.

Around a campfire, they all shared their tales. The gypsy family: their travels and adventures and the strange sights and beasts and otherworldly designs thereon. 

Florin told them of his village. The one that had lived and was now dying in the shadow of Castle Dracula. 

The gypsies all crossed themselves at the sound, the name of the place. 

Florin joined them. And followed suit. 

He told them he was sent out to find someone, a man that the township needed to deliver them from the evil that now beset upon them nightly and fed on them like cattle. 

“Who?” asked the old woman, the grandmother of the family band. She hadn’t spoken up til now, since the young rider’s arrival. 

“Professor Abraham Van Helsing.” Florin said. 

A murmur of excitement went all throughout the family then. 

Then the man, the father of the band turned to Florin with something like a smile on his weathered face and he said: –

“We know where you can find this man. We know where you can find this Van Helsing.”

…

Erin was proud of her friend, Florin, and she wished him Godspeed everyday in the many weeks that followed his departure. She prayed to God that he was not dead and that he'd surely found someone that could help them and deliver them from this dark period of slaughter. 

More had died since he had left. More children and more adults. Neither the elderly nor the lame nor nubile young were spared the possible cutthroat silence of the nightly butchery. And many more died slowly, as if by some disease of cruel design, loss of blood slowly drained and taken. Fed upon over time while some were given more immediate and ravenous animal treatment. 

No one knew who was next. The pattern was everywhere and animal and impossible for any of them to follow. Many had already lost heart and taken their own lives, or fled. 

Some said that Florin was long gone. Or dead. Not to be counted on in either case. 

But Erin held on and she kept praying. Even when her parents and her aunt disappeared one night. Even when her own little brother had taken with the blood-loss plague that doubtless emanated from Castle Dracula with merciless and heartless intent. The poor little one like so many others before had become bed ridden. Pale and listless, barely breathing up til the end. This morning. 

Only her most immediate neighbors had bothered coming over to help with the burial and the funerary rites. Nobody had seen the priest in many days. 

She'd wept so lost and broken then when the final shovelful of dirt had been thrown and the sparse few gathered had taken their leave. She was so alone now and she didn't know what to do anymore. Everything felt useless and hopeless, that they all just lived at the cruel whim and mercy of horror that they could not even see until it was at last felt, and then at last as final cruel torture you were allowed to gaze into its terrible face. As final reward and punishment altogether, rolled into one. 

Sheer torture. Sheer agony was all that poor Erin felt now. 

That was why she'd volunteered this night for sentry duty. None had spoken against it. They were all of them far too tired and broken of heart and spirit to care anymore. At the beginning it would've been unheard of, a young lady like herself, only nineteen years and unwed… but now it didn't matter. There weren't enough able bodied men left anymore anyways. 

So she'd been given lantern and pistol and a small cask of warm wine. To protect against the cold. 

And then she'd taken to her watch. The last one, relieving the midnight man at three after and taking the final post till dawn. Alone. In the dark. 

She tried so desperately not to weep. But she couldn't help herself. Alone out here in the cold all of the faces of all of the dead friends and children and poor old folk came back racing through her mind unbidden in a procession that she could not bear but couldn't run from either. 

Erin wept and prayed and begged God to help them, to bring him back. To please, have Florin successful and bringing back their deliverer, their savior! 

Please Lord! Please! 

Save Us! 

Someone else weeping, a child crying, off in the dark somewhere, brought young Erin out her thoughts and prayers. 

A little startled she tried to spy out, holding the lantern aloft out into the dark, and she called: –

“Hello? Is someone there?" 

No word … but more weeping. 

A child's. A little girl's … by the sound. 

Forgetting herself and suddenly terrified for the thought of a small child out here alone with so much evil about, Erin flew forward with lantern held ahead and the pistol of her charge o’the night cocked. 

It wasn't long before she found the small little girl. In a horrible filthy dress, as if the child had been lost for weeks in the woods in naught but her pajamas. 

The child was turned away and bent and crying in her hands. Sobbing. 

Erin felt terrible for the little one, she went to her without any further hesitation, calling to the girl:

“Are you alright!? Oh my God, how did you get out here? Where are your parents? What're you doing out here, little one?" 

The child did not free her face but continued to weep, trying to speak through her crown cries and her sodden little fingers. 

“M-my, my-ma-mama…" 

Erin set the pistol aside as she knelt to the child and gently put her hands on her shoulders. The poor thing…

“It's ok, I'll get you home. Who's your mother? What's your name, little one?" she asked softly. 

The little girl stopped crying abruptly. But still she kept her face buried in her hands. 

Yet her voice was much clearer now, when finally she said: – 

"My name is Carmilla, Erin of Thoten. Thank you for asking.”

Erin suddenly felt cold and faint and as if her heart and chest had suddenly filled with dropping weight. She wondered fleetingly for that split second if this was the prelude to death, yet another heart breaking. She understood and knew that something was terribly wrong right away. 

Carmilla had been dead and gone for months now. Way back at nearly the start of all this relentless terror. 

Carmilla whirled suddenly. In the moonlight dark her face was both brilliant and youthful and pugnacious dog-like and goblin. She smiled and bore animal fangs and hissed like a rodent that carried disease. 

Erin flung herself back. In her sudden sprawl she fumbled for the pistol but her hand in its panic had only succeeded in shoving it further away. Out of reach. 

Carmilla laughed and tittered. Rodent squeals and bat-like screeches commingled with a child's giggles. 

Her eyes were flickering. Pinkish red dots that shone at the centers. Vulpine face drawn as she brandished fangs and continued to emit her strange abominated titters. 

“You're so kind, Erin. You always were. And if you're still wondering, my mother is just right there…” 

She pointed one clawed little finger out into the further dark. Erin was helpless but to look. 

And she saw her emerge from the ebon pitch of night in which she lorded and held as her ultimate domain. Clad in phantom white gown that darkled and shifted and changed to royal crimson red that was heavy and wet in spots, changing and shifting back and again with every advancing ghostly step. Her face was also phantom pale, so much so that it shone in the postmidnight pitch black like an unholy beacon, but yet she was beautiful. And terrible. Luciferian and unearthly driven. Her dark hair, a curtain of night unto itself, flowing out like a royal cape, as if caught in some unseen and unfelt wind. 

She came forward. And then like her dress, her Luciferian face began to change and dance and shift. 

Animal - wolf - rat - feline - insect - toad - bat - unknown - and then a rotten visage that was corpselike with the decay of the grave and a bastard conglomerate amalgamation of all her dancing shifted faces…

… then back to the one of beauty as she came upon poor Erin, sprawled on the cobble stones in the dark and at her feet and speechless. 

At the feet of Countess Zaleska, lord and master of Castle Dracula. Lord of the lands now through her awesome power and bloodthirst that could never be quenched. 

She said something then, before she finished the child –

“I've heard you, Erin. I have heard you. Although God has not heard your prayers, I have heard every word, I've listened every time, I've watched and relished as you shed each and every single tear, til now. Now, dear child, I, and not God, I am here to answer your prayers!" 

Carmilla laughed shrill rodent squeals as Erin shrieked one last final bottled shriek and Countess Zaleska came in with her bright fangs barred and descended. 

Erin died shrieking as they tore her apart. Still hoping and believing that Florin might come back and save them, that he might come back right now and save her. 

Many, the few that were left, heard her screams and struggles and the heavy sounds of wet fabric tearing and bones splintering and breaking, snapping. Slurping…

… Deep soupy pulls of drinking and chewing and laughter around mouthfuls of raw fresh meat. Nearly all of them that were left heard what was happening. 

But none came out. 

None came out to do anything about it. 

So the Countess Zaleska and her little Carmilla enjoyed a feast of yet another poor peasant girl. 

As the tattered remnants of the small village just listened and bore it. All night. 

All night until the dawn. 

Some of them were at least grateful for the coming rain, they could hear its booming and thunder now. They would be grateful for the rainfall to come and wash what was left of the young girl away from the cobblestones that so many of them had once swept and cared for and silently cherished. 

No more. 

Now they were just happy for the rain. It would wash the Erin girl's blood away, her last spent and violent red. 

But … those few, … they weren't so happy nor gladdened by the sound that seemed to call the storm into waking being. In bastard duet with the thunderclaps, preceding and then rising in intensity with the mounting roar of the worsening sky …

It sounded like roaring. 

Like the roars of an animal unknown and thrilled with bloodlust for another hunt that was coming. 

TO BE CONTINUED…

The assistant watched the sun set blood red on the doomed little village. From on high, within one of the towers of Castle Dracula. It bathed the little commoners  place with the last of its lurid rays as it shot the sky with flame. Then it departed with one final flashing wink. The assistant kissed it goodbye, blew it away on his hand. 

And smiled. 

A sound then carried and traveled through all of the silent ancient cobwebbed castle: The familiar creak of hinges and wood… the opening of a coffin. A casket lid softly closed, as it was guided down by phantom hand… his master's power. 

The Countess. 

The dread sun had been banished for another night for her majesty, his great mistress, the master sorceress of the dark, now the princess of shadow-black. She was unrivaled now. The stupid little peasants hadn't a chance now, not a chance in hell. 

For the Countess herself must now be master of such a dominion… she must now control all hellfire and flame as she now commanded the wild and the beasts within it. 

And the town below… through fear and terror, they were now her subjects. 

Subjugated and made prostrate to her power, she took from them as she pleased, when and where she so desired. They all fell victim to her magic and her might. Her ripping drinking fangs of mutilation, a hunger unsated and boundless that nonetheless held them all prisoner. Such hunger was an abattoir disease…

All the pitiful dirt farmer villagers would soon fall and bleeding, be held in the ripping necromantic fangs of her mighty jaws, beautiful. And now bestial. Vulpine. Powerful. 

Soon they would all feel her bloodlusting mouth about their throats, they would all come to her as she nightsong bade them. Commanding them, the royalty that she truly was and that coursed through her unholy veins. 

She was part undead. Thanks to the magic. And the ritual of the biting chair. 

And the fangs of the Count. Whose castle they now held. 

And himself… he allows himself this small and private boast. It would never be appropriate to brandish it before the master, his beloved Countess. 

She entered the chamber where he dwelt, watching the last of the sun’s light, diminishing as it had fled, fade to a darker blue then die as it became truer black. 

Stars like jewels in the ebon curtain came to life as his great master came from behind and stood beside him. Her presence was intoxicating. Powerful. 

She might not ever know how much he truly loved her, it was not his station and with a bitter heart he knew that, but to be by her side and to aide her in domination of the pathetic world was enough. 

The closest he would likely ever get to being her lover. Only in his most private fantasies. Only in his wildest dreams. Secret. He musn't trouble the Lady Zaleska with such trivialities. They were beneath her. He knew that. 

“Has our little one awoken yet?" Zaleska asked the assistant. 

The assistant said with a bow and a smile: "No, no. You know how little ones can be. Slow risers. Not quick to take to feet and task, but she'll learn. She'll get better.” He bowed again, saying: “She has you, master, to look to for example. The finest lady of shadows that has ever doth existed on the face of this accursed earth.”

Zaleska smiled. Pleased. He was such a good and loyal man.  

A little voice went shrill at the entrance to the chamber. 

Carmilla shrieked with dark joy. 

“Yes! Yay! The sun has died again! The Lord's Eye has gone blind for another curtain of night and now we get to go out and play!" 

Zaleska and the assistant looked to the little one as she jumped up and down in the doorway with savage glee. So proud. 

Carmilla ran up to the pair, her new dark guardians and bastard companions of the shadowland. She jumped up and down some more. Cheering. Screaming. Shrieking. Squealing. Part small child joviality and part terrible aggressive animal bestial shriekings. 

She looked up to them again, to Zaleska. She worshipped her. Her undead uncanny gaze held pure corrupted adoration for the Countess. Her great master. 

She said again, asking this time like a small impatient child really wanting something. In part, she still was. But the other part, darker and more dominating now… that part tainted everything that the small demon animal in childshape did from then on. 

“We do, right? Now that the sun is dead and God is blind to the little sows, we can go out and play with them, right? Oh! … I want to so badly, master! We do now, right?”

"Yes, my servant. Yes, my child. We must. We are creatures that live to go out and play in the dark." Zaleska said soothingly, reassuringly. 

Carmilla cheered! Then catching herself, restrained her excitement, then gave a courtly curtsey and bow, saying: “Thank you, master. Thank you, Countess. Your power and wisdom are unrivaled." 

The wolves outside once more began their nightly song of predator's chase and claim, they began again this night like all others as of late, howling their music of blood and flesh and flame. Renewed. 

The children of the dark were all revived now and they took to the night once more, empowered with unholy rage. 

But as the vampires and their assistant prepared for another nocturnal hunt, another dark night of feeding on innocent human prey in the village below…

… many rivals, made, were approaching.

…

The bloodbags writhed in the dirt. The three that were left. Frankenstein's massive body-part patchwork nosferatu creation watched them from the mouth of the cave where it rested and protected itself from the sun. 

It had known, naturally, innate, it had known to fly from the face of the sun. It had known when it was born from the slab by lightning and black magic that the sun was its enemy. 

Known. In its blood. Knowledge that was animal down to the bone. Patchwork bones… sawn, broken… reshaped… fitted together into new more powerful form and size like godly and powerful puzzle pieces. 

Remade. 

Frankenstein’s nosferatu monster sniffed the air… blood… fear… and… better yet. 

The flight of the sun. 

Darkness returned and the black lands came alive again with fog. Great drifting veils of phantom white. The creation stepped free of the cave and closed the few steps to his captive bloodbags, now down to an unholy three.

He picked up the misshapen one. Almost dead, almost empty. Weak pathetic little thing…

It groaned as he sank his teeth into the softest part of the wretched little twist of flesh, the only part of the rotten little fruit the creation deemed worthy to put his newborn lips to. 

The tender meat beneath the hollow crook of the underarm. Just above the large artery there. 

He sucked and drank deeply and the little deformed man begged God and the devil and the creation itself as he slowly felt the life being pulled from him, with a savage hungry tug. All throughout his bent and mismanaged frame. 

He also cursed the name of Frankenstein again.  Henry Frankenstein and all of his fathers and sons and all of the women too! the bastards! 

Curse them! 

Egnaw knew he was going to die. He only hoped Frankenstein’s end would be even more painful. 

But the mad doctor might be dead already. Still unconscious since the many days since the night of the experiment and the towers fall. 

Collapsed. Explosion. Sabotage by the hand of the rival Doctor Praetorius. 

The bastard. 

The creation ripped its mouth away after a final draw off the bloodbag and chewed. Egnaw screamed. But it wasn't prolonged like it might be with anybody else. The little man servant slave was becoming even more attuned and accustomed to unyielding pain. In unyielding volumes. 

The creation threw him back into the dirt with the other two. Still chewing. 

It swallowed. 

And then howled at the moon. Crescent and sickle tonight. Like a curved scythes blade.

Then throaty and gurgling he spoke once more. The only word it seemed to want to speak since the day of its unnatural birth. 

“Frankenstein…!” 

Egnaw cringed. He hated the sound of its wretched voice. He remembered handling such vocal chords alongside the mad doctor in another lifetime, not long but so long ago and far away… 

The fortress stone of jagged rocks and what they held for him were near, but the creation slightly altered course. Veering ever so slightly in its direction for the Carpathian Mountains. It had caught a newer fresher scent. Closer. 

A man. Moving fast. On horseflesh. 

A rider. 

…

He moved with one thought dominating all else. Find him. Find the vampire killer.

Find Professor Van Helsing. 

Florin moved with near suicidal speed. His horse beneath him was strong and durable. But nonetheless, they were both growing more exhausted. Yet he feared to stop and make camp. He feared whatever may be stalking through the night. It may be the same evil that now lay siege to his little village. 

Darkness spreads as a shadow does grow…

he must be careful. 

But then suddenly the beast beneath him came to a near dead stop. Nearly throwing him as its hooves skidded and dug shallow trenches in the black earth. 

The horse was skittish. Prancing and refusing to settle beneath him. Refusing to go any further. 

Florin, already frustrated with the urgency of his task, began to chide and curse the animal. Trying to berate and spur him on forward to the next farm or village. More children or others back home in town could be dying right now as his stubborn stupid horse just danced and behaved foolish-

Snap! 

A branch or twig or something else broke in two in the night all about him. Somewhere in the dark. Florin shut his lips. And fell silent. 

Instantly gripped with dread. Fear mounting higher into terror. He was suddenly aware, certain that he was not at all out here alone with his horse. Something else was out here too. 

Something moving. 

He suppressed his galloping heart of terror and forced himself to listen. Listen for movement in the encompassing dark wood. 

His horse grew more anxious. It wanted to be off, to flee. 

Everything inside both rider and his steed told him to run. 

Run. Now. 

Fast. 

“Stop, now, you!" Florin hissed at his horse, “We've no time for trifling games!" 

“Your horse is smarter than you are, rider." 

Florin, shocked, almost let out a wail, but before he could the voice from out of the dark came again and calmly said. 

“Don't. Please. Don't be afraid. Don't scream. You'll get us all killed." A beat. “Just be quiet." 

Florin whispered to the dark: “Who are you?"

“Dismount and move slowly. To the bushes. Leave your horse. There is something out here." 

“Who are you, what're you talking about and why should I trust you?" Florin asked again. 

“There is something out here, my friend. I'm just a fellow traveler, and I've no wish to see another man butchered." A beat. “Now do as I say, or to hell with you." 

Florin considered it a moment… and then considered the surrounding dark. It seemed filled. With something hurtling. 

Something bounding like an eager jungle cat hunting sure prey. 

Florin quickly dismounted, grabbed his saddlebags and then ran to the voice as it called out once more. He scrambled in the bushes with a large dark gypsy man with long black hair, beneath swashbuckler scarf wrapped round his crown in a skullcap. He looked severe and he was desperately clutching something in his calloused hands. 

A rosary. A small wooden crucifix attached, dangled from the tear drop center. 

The gypsy looked at Florin with wide eyes filled to the whites with all of the night and its superstitious and terrible wonder. He brought a finger to his lips, in a gesture to bade the young man quiet. Then he pointed out into the night to tell him to watch. 

Florin did. 

The horse, reins tied to the branch of a nearby tree, was now more nervous and jumpy than ever. Florin had never before seen a trained and broken horse behave so strangely and so wild. 

And then it came out of the woods. Out of the night. Large and hulking. Eyes twinkling twin stars of blood red jewels in all of the surrounding oppressive dark. Set in a stitched up grotesque patchwork of a face that was both human and rat like, commingled and blasphemously mixed. A terrible mouth opened and moonlight glinted off the drooling tendril strands of bestial salivation and rabid animal slobber turning them into long translucent jewels of glass in the lunar glow. A pair of fangs, bone-white, gleamed amongst the rest of the mouth of rotten black. A miasma of decay and fecal stench, pungent and strong filled the cold space. Warming it with powerful foul and fetid odor, the heat of death. 

He growled. Seethed. It said a name then. One Florin swore he'd heard somewhere before. 

“Frankenstein…!”

The horse was in hysterics now. Its eyes rolling in wild terror as it kicked and reared and pranced in a frightful panic that only the animal can know. It hurt Florin's heart to see the beast as such.

What came next was much worse. 

One of the large powerful arms of reanimated muscle, rippling beneath pale blue corpse flesh, shot out and found the poor beast’s throat, ripping it out in a sudden blur of crimson and hide and tearing discolored claw. A heavy steaming gout of dark animal blood shot forth from the fresh open wound which also belched steam into the night. The large rotting patchwork nosferatu brought its face into the warm red dark cord of horse blood and began to catch it in its wide open mouth. Gulping. Lapping. Tonguing with wild abandon the red warm cord-stream. 

As the horse suddenly stilled, then wobbled, then fell against the tree to which it was tethered and began to sag down to the earth, the creation came in, bathing its horrid face in horrible animal scarlet baptism as its mouth closed the distance and met the fresh wound ripped from the large stout neck. 

Florin from the bushes, with his host of gypsy saviors, could hear deep heavy gulping – deep heavy pulls of drinking, and the crunch and relish of strenuous chewing. Raw meat being devoured as the throat worked heavily to pull in thick viscous liquid. His stomach lurched and he nearly vomited but he held it together. It was awful but he could not pull his eyes away from the scene. Neither could his fortunate band of gypsies host. They all watched. Spellbound in the most terrible way by that which is so arresting and magnetic because it is so appalling you cannot actually believe your very eyes. You cannot believe it is actually happening. 

The vulpine manmade nosferatu creation took its fill, then with great prodigious strength, it threw the dead weight of the horse over one mighty shoulder, and then bounded off into the night. Heavily breathing through gurgles and throaty laughter. 

Florin waited til he was sure the thing was gone, then he thanked the Lord aloud and crossed himself. 

The gypsies gave their own prayers of thanks in another language the rider didn’t understand. But he was sure he nonetheless knew and felt every word. 

Yes. Thank the Lord on High. God Help Us. 

Carefully and quietly they arose from their hiding place together. 

The man who’d saved him spoke first. 

“Now you know to be careful in the night, fellow traveler. But now you are without a horse. Come with us, on our wagon, we will give free ride to your village.”

Florin said kindly but firmly: “Thank you but you don’t understand, I’ve just come from there and I’ve been searching the past many nights, I must get back on my way… but I’ve no idea where to look…”

The rider fell despondent. The sight of the creation and its feasting on his ride still very vivid and fresh in his mind. And he’d been thus far so fruitless in his hunt. Aimless. Nowhere. He had no idea of where to go. 

“Come with us,” the man, seeing the young one’s crestfallen face said again, “we can give you horse and maybe direction.” A beat. He held out his hand, “We shall see.”

Florin looked up into the weathered gypsy face and took the traveler’s hand. 

And away they went. Back to the gypsy camp. Not far off. 

Once there Florin saw that the band of travelers were actually a family. A father, mother, three sons, four daughters, a babe, and an old woman.

Around a campfire, they all shared their tales. The gypsy family: their travels and adventures and the strange sights and beasts and otherworldly designs thereon. 

Florin told them of his village. The one that had lived and was now dying in the shadow of Castle Dracula. 

The gypsies all crossed themselves at the sound, the name of the place. 

Florin joined them. And followed suit. 

He told them he was sent out to find someone, a man that the township needed to deliver them from the evil that now beset upon them nightly and fed on them like cattle. 

“Who?” asked the old woman, the grandmother of the family band. She hadn’t spoken up til now, since the young rider’s arrival. 

“Professor Abraham Van Helsing.” Florin said. 

A murmur of excitement went all throughout the family then. 

Then the man, the father of the band turned to Florin with something like a smile on his weathered face and he said: –

“We know where you can find this man. We know where you can find this Van Helsing.”

…

Erin was proud of her friend, Florin, and she wished him Godspeed everyday in the many weeks that followed his departure. She prayed to God that he was not dead and that he'd surely found someone that could help them and deliver them from this dark period of slaughter. 

More had died since he had left. More children and more adults. Neither the elderly nor the lame nor nubile young were spared the possible cutthroat silence of the nightly butchery. And many more died slowly, as if by some disease of cruel design, loss of blood slowly drained and taken. Fed upon over time while some were given more immediate and ravenous animal treatment. 

No one knew who was next. The pattern was everywhere and animal and impossible for any of them to follow. Many had already lost heart and taken their own lives, or fled. 

Some said that Florin was long gone. Or dead. Not to be counted on in either case. 

But Erin held on and she kept praying. Even when her parents and her aunt disappeared one night. Even when her own little brother had taken with the blood-loss plague that doubtless emanated from Castle Dracula with merciless and heartless intent. The poor little one like so many others before had become bed ridden. Pale and listless, barely breathing up til the end. This morning. 

Only her most immediate neighbors had bothered coming over to help with the burial and the funerary rites. Nobody had seen the priest in many days. 

She'd wept so lost and broken then when the final shovelful of dirt had been thrown and the sparse few gathered had taken their leave. She was so alone now and she didn't know what to do anymore. Everything felt useless and hopeless, that they all just lived at the cruel whim and mercy of horror that they could not even see until it was at last felt, and then at last as final cruel torture you were allowed to gaze into its terrible face. As final reward and punishment altogether, rolled into one. 

Sheer torture. Sheer agony was all that poor Erin felt now. 

That was why she'd volunteered this night for sentry duty. None had spoken against it. They were all of them far too tired and broken of heart and spirit to care anymore. At the beginning it would've been unheard of, a young lady like herself, only nineteen years and unwed… but now it didn't matter. There weren't enough able bodied men left anymore anyways. 

So she'd been given lantern and pistol and a small cask of warm wine. To protect against the cold. 

And then she'd taken to her watch. The last one, relieving the midnight man at three after and taking the final post till dawn. Alone. In the dark. 

She tried so desperately not to weep. But she couldn't help herself. Alone out here in the cold all of the faces of all of the dead friends and children and poor old folk came back racing through her mind unbidden in a procession that she could not bear but couldn't run from either. 

Erin wept and prayed and begged God to help them, to bring him back. To please, have Florin successful and bringing back their deliverer, their savior! 

Please Lord! Please! 

Save Us! 

Someone else weeping, a child crying, off in the dark somewhere, brought young Erin out her thoughts and prayers. 

A little startled she tried to spy out, holding the lantern aloft out into the dark, and she called: –

“Hello? Is someone there?" 

No word … but more weeping. 

A child's. A little girl's … by the sound. 

Forgetting herself and suddenly terrified for the thought of a small child out here alone with so much evil about, Erin flew forward with lantern held ahead and the pistol of her charge o’the night cocked. 

It wasn't long before she found the small little girl. In a horrible filthy dress, as if the child had been lost for weeks in the woods in naught but her pajamas. 

The child was turned away and bent and crying in her hands. Sobbing. 

Erin felt terrible for the little one, she went to her without any further hesitation, calling to the girl:

“Are you alright!? Oh my God, how did you get out here? Where are your parents? What're you doing out here, little one?" 

The child did not free her face but continued to weep, trying to speak through her crown cries and her sodden little fingers. 

“M-my, my-ma-mama…" 

Erin set the pistol aside as she knelt to the child and gently put her hands on her shoulders. The poor thing…

“It's ok, I'll get you home. Who's your mother? What's your name, little one?" she asked softly. 

The little girl stopped crying abruptly. But still she kept her face buried in her hands. 

Yet her voice was much clearer now, when finally she said: – 

"My name is Carmilla, Erin of Thoten. Thank you for asking.”

Erin suddenly felt cold and faint and as if her heart and chest had suddenly filled with dropping weight. She wondered fleetingly for that split second if this was the prelude to death, yet another heart breaking. She understood and knew that something was terribly wrong right away. 

Carmilla had been dead and gone for months now. Way back at nearly the start of all this relentless terror. 

Carmilla whirled suddenly. In the moonlight dark her face was both brilliant and youthful and pugnacious dog-like and goblin. She smiled and bore animal fangs and hissed like a rodent that carried disease. 

Erin flung herself back. In her sudden sprawl she fumbled for the pistol but her hand in its panic had only succeeded in shoving it further away. Out of reach. 

Carmilla laughed and tittered. Rodent squeals and bat-like screeches commingled with a child's giggles. 

Her eyes were flickering. Pinkish red dots that shone at the centers. Vulpine face drawn as she brandished fangs and continued to emit her strange abominated titters. 

“You're so kind, Erin. You always were. And if you're still wondering, my mother is just right there…” 

She pointed one clawed little finger out into the further dark. Erin was helpless but to look. 

And she saw her emerge from the ebon pitch of night in which she lorded and held as her ultimate domain. Clad in phantom white gown that darkled and shifted and changed to royal crimson red that was heavy and wet in spots, changing and shifting back and again with every advancing ghostly step. Her face was also phantom pale, so much so that it shone in the postmidnight pitch black like an unholy beacon, but yet she was beautiful. And terrible. Luciferian and unearthly driven. Her dark hair, a curtain of night unto itself, flowing out like a royal cape, as if caught in some unseen and unfelt wind. 

She came forward. And then like her dress, her Luciferian face began to change and dance and shift. 

Animal - wolf - rat - feline - insect - toad - bat - unknown - and then a rotten visage that was corpselike with the decay of the grave and a bastard conglomerate amalgamation of all her dancing shifted faces…

… then back to the one of beauty as she came upon poor Erin, sprawled on the cobble stones in the dark and at her feet and speechless. 

At the feet of Countess Zaleska, lord and master of Castle Dracula. Lord of the lands now through her awesome power and bloodthirst that could never be quenched. 

She said something then, before she finished the child –

“I've heard you, Erin. I have heard you. Although God has not heard your prayers, I have heard every word, I've listened every time, I've watched and relished as you shed each and every single tear, til now. Now, dear child, I, and not God, I am here to answer your prayers!" 

Carmilla laughed shrill rodent squeals as Erin shrieked one last final bottled shriek and Countess Zaleska came in with her bright fangs barred and descended. 

Erin died shrieking as they tore her apart. Still hoping and believing that Florin might come back and save them, that he might come back right now and save her. 

Many, the few that were left, heard her screams and struggles and the heavy sounds of wet fabric tearing and bones splintering and breaking, snapping. Slurping…

… Deep soupy pulls of drinking and chewing and laughter around mouthfuls of raw fresh meat. Nearly all of them that were left heard what was happening. 

But none came out. 

None came out to do anything about it. 

So the Countess Zaleska and her little Carmilla enjoyed a feast of yet another poor peasant girl. 

As the tattered remnants of the small village just listened and bore it. All night. 

All night until the dawn. 

Some of them were at least grateful for the coming rain, they could hear its booming and thunder now. They would be grateful for the rainfall to come and wash what was left of the young girl away from the cobblestones that so many of them had once swept and cared for and silently cherished. 

No more. 

Now they were just happy for the rain. It would wash the Erin girl's blood away, her last spent and violent red. 

But … those few, … they weren't so happy nor gladdened by the sound that seemed to call the storm into waking being. In bastard duet with the thunderclaps, preceding and then rising in intensity with the mounting roar of the worsening sky …

It sounded like roaring. 

Like the roars of an animal unknown and thrilled with bloodlust for another hunt that was coming. 

TO BE CONTINUED…

The assistant watched the sun set blood red on the doomed little village. From on high, within one of the towers of Castle Dracula. It bathed the little commoners  place with the last of its lurid rays as it shot the sky with flame. Then it departed with one final flashing wink. The assistant kissed it goodbye, blew it away on his hand. 

And smiled. 

A sound then carried and traveled through all of the silent ancient cobwebbed castle: The familiar creak of hinges and wood… the opening of a coffin. A casket lid softly closed, as it was guided down by phantom hand… his master's power. 

The Countess. 

The dread sun had been banished for another night for her majesty, his great mistress, the master sorceress of the dark, now the princess of shadow-black. She was unrivaled now. The stupid little peasants hadn't a chance now, not a chance in hell. 

For the Countess herself must now be master of such a dominion… she must now control all hellfire and flame as she now commanded the wild and the beasts within it. 

And the town below… through fear and terror, they were now her subjects. 

Subjugated and made prostrate to her power, she took from them as she pleased, when and where she so desired. They all fell victim to her magic and her might. Her ripping drinking fangs of mutilation, a hunger unsated and boundless that nonetheless held them all prisoner. Such hunger was an abattoir disease…

All the pitiful dirt farmer villagers would soon fall and bleeding, be held in the ripping necromantic fangs of her mighty jaws, beautiful. And now bestial. Vulpine. Powerful. 

Soon they would all feel her bloodlusting mouth about their throats, they would all come to her as she nightsong bade them. Commanding them, the royalty that she truly was and that coursed through her unholy veins. 

She was part undead. Thanks to the magic. And the ritual of the biting chair. 

And the fangs of the Count. Whose castle they now held. 

And himself… he allows himself this small and private boast. It would never be appropriate to brandish it before the master, his beloved Countess. 

She entered the chamber where he dwelt, watching the last of the sun’s light, diminishing as it had fled, fade to a darker blue then die as it became truer black. 

Stars like jewels in the ebon curtain came to life as his great master came from behind and stood beside him. Her presence was intoxicating. Powerful. 

She might not ever know how much he truly loved her, it was not his station and with a bitter heart he knew that, but to be by her side and to aide her in domination of the pathetic world was enough. 

The closest he would likely ever get to being her lover. Only in his most private fantasies. Only in his wildest dreams. Secret. He musn't trouble the Lady Zaleska with such trivialities. They were beneath her. He knew that. 

“Has our little one awoken yet?" Zaleska asked the assistant. 

The assistant said with a bow and a smile: "No, no. You know how little ones can be. Slow risers. Not quick to take to feet and task, but she'll learn. She'll get better.” He bowed again, saying: “She has you, master, to look to for example. The finest lady of shadows that has ever doth existed on the face of this accursed earth.”

Zaleska smiled. Pleased. He was such a good and loyal man.  

A little voice went shrill at the entrance to the chamber. 

Carmilla shrieked with dark joy. 

“Yes! Yay! The sun has died again! The Lord's Eye has gone blind for another curtain of night and now we get to go out and play!" 

Zaleska and the assistant looked to the little one as she jumped up and down in the doorway with savage glee. So proud. 

Carmilla ran up to the pair, her new dark guardians and bastard companions of the shadowland. She jumped up and down some more. Cheering. Screaming. Shrieking. Squealing. Part small child joviality and part terrible aggressive animal bestial shriekings. 

She looked up to them again, to Zaleska. She worshipped her. Her undead uncanny gaze held pure corrupted adoration for the Countess. Her great master. 

She said again, asking this time like a small impatient child really wanting something. In part, she still was. But the other part, darker and more dominating now… that part tainted everything that the small demon animal in childshape did from then on. 

“We do, right? Now that the sun is dead and God is blind to the little sows, we can go out and play with them, right? Oh! … I want to so badly, master! We do now, right?”

"Yes, my servant. Yes, my child. We must. We are creatures that live to go out and play in the dark." Zaleska said soothingly, reassuringly. 

Carmilla cheered! Then catching herself, restrained her excitement, then gave a courtly curtsey and bow, saying: “Thank you, master. Thank you, Countess. Your power and wisdom are unrivaled." 

The wolves outside once more began their nightly song of predator's chase and claim, they began again this night like all others as of late, howling their music of blood and flesh and flame. Renewed. 

The children of the dark were all revived now and they took to the night once more, empowered with unholy rage. 

But as the vampires and their assistant prepared for another nocturnal hunt, another dark night of feeding on innocent human prey in the village below…

… many rivals, made, were approaching.

…

The bloodbags writhed in the dirt. The three that were left. Frankenstein's massive body-part patchwork nosferatu creation watched them from the mouth of the cave where it rested and protected itself from the sun. 

It had known, naturally, innate, it had known to fly from the face of the sun. It had known when it was born from the slab by lightning and black magic that the sun was its enemy. 

Known. In its blood. Knowledge that was animal down to the bone. Patchwork bones… sawn, broken… reshaped… fitted together into new more powerful form and size like godly and powerful puzzle pieces. 

Remade. 

Frankenstein’s nosferatu monster sniffed the air… blood… fear… and… better yet. 

The flight of the sun. 

Darkness returned and the black lands came alive again with fog. Great drifting veils of phantom white. The creation stepped free of the cave and closed the few steps to his captive bloodbags, now down to an unholy three.

He picked up the misshapen one. Almost dead, almost empty. Weak pathetic little thing…

It groaned as he sank his teeth into the softest part of the wretched little twist of flesh, the only part of the rotten little fruit the creation deemed worthy to put his newborn lips to. 

The tender meat beneath the hollow crook of the underarm. Just above the large artery there. 

He sucked and drank deeply and the little deformed man begged God and the devil and the creation itself as he slowly felt the life being pulled from him, with a savage hungry tug. All throughout his bent and mismanaged frame. 

He also cursed the name of Frankenstein again.  Henry Frankenstein and all of his fathers and sons and all of the women too! the bastards! 

Curse them! 

Egnaw knew he was going to die. He only hoped Frankenstein’s end would be even more painful. 

But the mad doctor might be dead already. Still unconscious since the many days since the night of the experiment and the towers fall. 

Collapsed. Explosion. Sabotage by the hand of the rival Doctor Praetorius. 

The bastard. 

The creation ripped its mouth away after a final draw off the bloodbag and chewed. Egnaw screamed. But it wasn't prolonged like it might be with anybody else. The little man servant slave was becoming even more attuned and accustomed to unyielding pain. In unyielding volumes. 

The creation threw him back into the dirt with the other two. Still chewing. 

It swallowed. 

And then howled at the moon. Crescent and sickle tonight. Like a curved scythes blade.

Then throaty and gurgling he spoke once more. The only word it seemed to want to speak since the day of its unnatural birth. 

“Frankenstein…!” 

Egnaw cringed. He hated the sound of its wretched voice. He remembered handling such vocal chords alongside the mad doctor in another lifetime, not long but so long ago and far away… 

The fortress stone of jagged rocks and what they held for him were near, but the creation slightly altered course. Veering ever so slightly in its direction for the Carpathian Mountains. It had caught a newer fresher scent. Closer. 

A man. Moving fast. On horseflesh. 

A rider. 

…

He moved with one thought dominating all else. Find him. Find the vampire killer.

Find Professor Van Helsing. 

Florin moved with near suicidal speed. His horse beneath him was strong and durable. But nonetheless, they were both growing more exhausted. Yet he feared to stop and make camp. He feared whatever may be stalking through the night. It may be the same evil that now lay siege to his little village. 

Darkness spreads as a shadow does grow…

he must be careful. 

But then suddenly the beast beneath him came to a near dead stop. Nearly throwing him as its hooves skidded and dug shallow trenches in the black earth. 

The horse was skittish. Prancing and refusing to settle beneath him. Refusing to go any further. 

Florin, already frustrated with the urgency of his task, began to chide and curse the animal. Trying to berate and spur him on forward to the next farm or village. More children or others back home in town could be dying right now as his stubborn stupid horse just danced and behaved foolish-

Snap! 

A branch or twig or something else broke in two in the night all about him. Somewhere in the dark. Florin shut his lips. And fell silent. 

Instantly gripped with dread. Fear mounting higher into terror. He was suddenly aware, certain that he was not at all out here alone with his horse. Something else was out here too. 

Something moving. 

He suppressed his galloping heart of terror and forced himself to listen. Listen for movement in the encompassing dark wood. 

His horse grew more anxious. It wanted to be off, to flee. 

Everything inside both rider and his steed told him to run. 

Run. Now. 

Fast. 

“Stop, now, you!" Florin hissed at his horse, “We've no time for trifling games!" 

“Your horse is smarter than you are, rider." 

Florin, shocked, almost let out a wail, but before he could the voice from out of the dark came again and calmly said. 

“Don't. Please. Don't be afraid. Don't scream. You'll get us all killed." A beat. “Just be quiet." 

Florin whispered to the dark: “Who are you?"

“Dismount and move slowly. To the bushes. Leave your horse. There is something out here." 

“Who are you, what're you talking about and why should I trust you?" Florin asked again. 

“There is something out here, my friend. I'm just a fellow traveler, and I've no wish to see another man butchered." A beat. “Now do as I say, or to hell with you." 

Florin considered it a moment… and then considered the surrounding dark. It seemed filled. With something hurtling. 

Something bounding like an eager jungle cat hunting sure prey. 

Florin quickly dismounted, grabbed his saddlebags and then ran to the voice as it called out once more. He scrambled in the bushes with a large dark gypsy man with long black hair, beneath swashbuckler scarf wrapped round his crown in a skullcap. He looked severe and he was desperately clutching something in his calloused hands. 

A rosary. A small wooden crucifix attached, dangled from the tear drop center. 

The gypsy looked at Florin with wide eyes filled to the whites with all of the night and its superstitious and terrible wonder. He brought a finger to his lips, in a gesture to bade the young man quiet. Then he pointed out into the night to tell him to watch. 

Florin did. 

The horse, reins tied to the branch of a nearby tree, was now more nervous and jumpy than ever. Florin had never before seen a trained and broken horse behave so strangely and so wild. 

And then it came out of the woods. Out of the night. Large and hulking. Eyes twinkling twin stars of blood red jewels in all of the surrounding oppressive dark. Set in a stitched up grotesque patchwork of a face that was both human and rat like, commingled and blasphemously mixed. A terrible mouth opened and moonlight glinted off the drooling tendril strands of bestial salivation and rabid animal slobber turning them into long translucent jewels of glass in the lunar glow. A pair of fangs, bone-white, gleamed amongst the rest of the mouth of rotten black. A miasma of decay and fecal stench, pungent and strong filled the cold space. Warming it with powerful foul and fetid odor, the heat of death. 

He growled. Seethed. It said a name then. One Florin swore he'd heard somewhere before. 

“Frankenstein…!”

The horse was in hysterics now. Its eyes rolling in wild terror as it kicked and reared and pranced in a frightful panic that only the animal can know. It hurt Florin's heart to see the beast as such.

What came next was much worse. 

One of the large powerful arms of reanimated muscle, rippling beneath pale blue corpse flesh, shot out and found the poor beast’s throat, ripping it out in a sudden blur of crimson and hide and tearing discolored claw. A heavy steaming gout of dark animal blood shot forth from the fresh open wound which also belched steam into the night. The large rotting patchwork nosferatu brought its face into the warm red dark cord of horse blood and began to catch it in its wide open mouth. Gulping. Lapping. Tonguing with wild abandon the red warm cord-stream. 

As the horse suddenly stilled, then wobbled, then fell against the tree to which it was tethered and began to sag down to the earth, the creation came in, bathing its horrid face in horrible animal scarlet baptism as its mouth closed the distance and met the fresh wound ripped from the large stout neck. 

Florin from the bushes, with his host of gypsy saviors, could hear deep heavy gulping – deep heavy pulls of drinking, and the crunch and relish of strenuous chewing. Raw meat being devoured as the throat worked heavily to pull in thick viscous liquid. His stomach lurched and he nearly vomited but he held it together. It was awful but he could not pull his eyes away from the scene. Neither could his fortunate band of gypsies host. They all watched. Spellbound in the most terrible way by that which is so arresting and magnetic because it is so appalling you cannot actually believe your very eyes. You cannot believe it is actually happening. 

The vulpine manmade nosferatu creation took its fill, then with great prodigious strength, it threw the dead weight of the horse over one mighty shoulder, and then bounded off into the night. Heavily breathing through gurgles and throaty laughter. 

Florin waited til he was sure the thing was gone, then he thanked the Lord aloud and crossed himself. 

The gypsies gave their own prayers of thanks in another language the rider didn’t understand. But he was sure he nonetheless knew and felt every word. 

Yes. Thank the Lord on High. God Help Us. 

Carefully and quietly they arose from their hiding place together. 

The man who’d saved him spoke first. 

“Now you know to be careful in the night, fellow traveler. But now you are without a horse. Come with us, on our wagon, we will give free ride to your village.”

Florin said kindly but firmly: “Thank you but you don’t understand, I’ve just come from there and I’ve been searching the past many nights, I must get back on my way… but I’ve no idea where to look…”

The rider fell despondent. The sight of the creation and its feasting on his ride still very vivid and fresh in his mind. And he’d been thus far so fruitless in his hunt. Aimless. Nowhere. He had no idea of where to go. 

“Come with us,” the man, seeing the young one’s crestfallen face said again, “we can give you horse and maybe direction.” A beat. He held out his hand, “We shall see.”

Florin looked up into the weathered gypsy face and took the traveler’s hand. 

And away they went. Back to the gypsy camp. Not far off. 

Once there Florin saw that the band of travelers were actually a family. A father, mother, three sons, four daughters, a babe, and an old woman.

Around a campfire, they all shared their tales. The gypsy family: their travels and adventures and the strange sights and beasts and otherworldly designs thereon. 

Florin told them of his village. The one that had lived and was now dying in the shadow of Castle Dracula. 

The gypsies all crossed themselves at the sound, the name of the place. 

Florin joined them. And followed suit. 

He told them he was sent out to find someone, a man that the township needed to deliver them from the evil that now beset upon them nightly and fed on them like cattle. 

“Who?” asked the old woman, the grandmother of the family band. She hadn’t spoken up til now, since the young rider’s arrival. 

“Professor Abraham Van Helsing.” Florin said. 

A murmur of excitement went all throughout the family then. 

Then the man, the father of the band turned to Florin with something like a smile on his weathered face and he said: –

“We know where you can find this man. We know where you can find this Van Helsing.”

…

Erin was proud of her friend, Florin, and she wished him Godspeed everyday in the many weeks that followed his departure. She prayed to God that he was not dead and that he'd surely found someone that could help them and deliver them from this dark period of slaughter. 

More had died since he had left. More children and more adults. Neither the elderly nor the lame nor nubile young were spared the possible cutthroat silence of the nightly butchery. And many more died slowly, as if by some disease of cruel design, loss of blood slowly drained and taken. Fed upon over time while some were given more immediate and ravenous animal treatment. 

No one knew who was next. The pattern was everywhere and animal and impossible for any of them to follow. Many had already lost heart and taken their own lives, or fled. 

Some said that Florin was long gone. Or dead. Not to be counted on in either case. 

But Erin held on and she kept praying. Even when her parents and her aunt disappeared one night. Even when her own little brother had taken with the blood-loss plague that doubtless emanated from Castle Dracula with merciless and heartless intent. The poor little one like so many others before had become bed ridden. Pale and listless, barely breathing up til the end. This morning. 

Only her most immediate neighbors had bothered coming over to help with the burial and the funerary rites. Nobody had seen the priest in many days. 

She'd wept so lost and broken then when the final shovelful of dirt had been thrown and the sparse few gathered had taken their leave. She was so alone now and she didn't know what to do anymore. Everything felt useless and hopeless, that they all just lived at the cruel whim and mercy of horror that they could not even see until it was at last felt, and then at last as final cruel torture you were allowed to gaze into its terrible face. As final reward and punishment altogether, rolled into one. 

Sheer torture. Sheer agony was all that poor Erin felt now. 

That was why she'd volunteered this night for sentry duty. None had spoken against it. They were all of them far too tired and broken of heart and spirit to care anymore. At the beginning it would've been unheard of, a young lady like herself, only nineteen years and unwed… but now it didn't matter. There weren't enough able bodied men left anymore anyways. 

So she'd been given lantern and pistol and a small cask of warm wine. To protect against the cold. 

And then she'd taken to her watch. The last one, relieving the midnight man at three after and taking the final post till dawn. Alone. In the dark. 

She tried so desperately not to weep. But she couldn't help herself. Alone out here in the cold all of the faces of all of the dead friends and children and poor old folk came back racing through her mind unbidden in a procession that she could not bear but couldn't run from either. 

Erin wept and prayed and begged God to help them, to bring him back. To please, have Florin successful and bringing back their deliverer, their savior! 

Please Lord! Please! 

Save Us! 

Someone else weeping, a child crying, off in the dark somewhere, brought young Erin out her thoughts and prayers. 

A little startled she tried to spy out, holding the lantern aloft out into the dark, and she called: –

“Hello? Is someone there?" 

No word … but more weeping. 

A child's. A little girl's … by the sound. 

Forgetting herself and suddenly terrified for the thought of a small child out here alone with so much evil about, Erin flew forward with lantern held ahead and the pistol of her charge o’the night cocked. 

It wasn't long before she found the small little girl. In a horrible filthy dress, as if the child had been lost for weeks in the woods in naught but her pajamas. 

The child was turned away and bent and crying in her hands. Sobbing. 

Erin felt terrible for the little one, she went to her without any further hesitation, calling to the girl:

“Are you alright!? Oh my God, how did you get out here? Where are your parents? What're you doing out here, little one?" 

The child did not free her face but continued to weep, trying to speak through her crown cries and her sodden little fingers. 

“M-my, my-ma-mama…" 

Erin set the pistol aside as she knelt to the child and gently put her hands on her shoulders. The poor thing…

“It's ok, I'll get you home. Who's your mother? What's your name, little one?" she asked softly. 

The little girl stopped crying abruptly. But still she kept her face buried in her hands. 

Yet her voice was much clearer now, when finally she said: – 

"My name is Carmilla, Erin of Thoten. Thank you for asking.”

Erin suddenly felt cold and faint and as if her heart and chest had suddenly filled with dropping weight. She wondered fleetingly for that split second if this was the prelude to death, yet another heart breaking. She understood and knew that something was terribly wrong right away. 

Carmilla had been dead and gone for months now. Way back at nearly the start of all this relentless terror. 

Carmilla whirled suddenly. In the moonlight dark her face was both brilliant and youthful and pugnacious dog-like and goblin. She smiled and bore animal fangs and hissed like a rodent that carried disease. 

Erin flung herself back. In her sudden sprawl she fumbled for the pistol but her hand in its panic had only succeeded in shoving it further away. Out of reach. 

Carmilla laughed and tittered. Rodent squeals and bat-like screeches commingled with a child's giggles. 

Her eyes were flickering. Pinkish red dots that shone at the centers. Vulpine face drawn as she brandished fangs and continued to emit her strange abominated titters. 

“You're so kind, Erin. You always were. And if you're still wondering, my mother is just right there…” 

She pointed one clawed little finger out into the further dark. Erin was helpless but to look. 

And she saw her emerge from the ebon pitch of night in which she lorded and held as her ultimate domain. Clad in phantom white gown that darkled and shifted and changed to royal crimson red that was heavy and wet in spots, changing and shifting back and again with every advancing ghostly step. Her face was also phantom pale, so much so that it shone in the postmidnight pitch black like an unholy beacon, but yet she was beautiful. And terrible. Luciferian and unearthly driven. Her dark hair, a curtain of night unto itself, flowing out like a royal cape, as if caught in some unseen and unfelt wind. 

She came forward. And then like her dress, her Luciferian face began to change and dance and shift. 

Animal - wolf - rat - feline - insect - toad - bat - unknown - and then a rotten visage that was corpselike with the decay of the grave and a bastard conglomerate amalgamation of all her dancing shifted faces…

… then back to the one of beauty as she came upon poor Erin, sprawled on the cobble stones in the dark and at her feet and speechless. 

At the feet of Countess Zaleska, lord and master of Castle Dracula. Lord of the lands now through her awesome power and bloodthirst that could never be quenched. 

She said something then, before she finished the child –

“I've heard you, Erin. I have heard you. Although God has not heard your prayers, I have heard every word, I've listened every time, I've watched and relished as you shed each and every single tear, til now. Now, dear child, I, and not God, I am here to answer your prayers!" 

Carmilla laughed shrill rodent squeals as Erin shrieked one last final bottled shriek and Countess Zaleska came in with her bright fangs barred and descended. 

Erin died shrieking as they tore her apart. Still hoping and believing that Florin might come back and save them, that he might come back right now and save her. 

Many, the few that were left, heard her screams and struggles and the heavy sounds of wet fabric tearing and bones splintering and breaking, snapping. Slurping…

… Deep soupy pulls of drinking and chewing and laughter around mouthfuls of raw fresh meat. Nearly all of them that were left heard what was happening. 

But none came out. 

None came out to do anything about it. 

So the Countess Zaleska and her little Carmilla enjoyed a feast of yet another poor peasant girl. 

As the tattered remnants of the small village just listened and bore it. All night. 

All night until the dawn. 

Some of them were at least grateful for the coming rain, they could hear its booming and thunder now. They would be grateful for the rainfall to come and wash what was left of the young girl away from the cobblestones that so many of them had once swept and cared for and silently cherished. 

No more. 

Now they were just happy for the rain. It would wash the Erin girl's blood away, her last spent and violent red. 

But … those few, … they weren't so happy nor gladdened by the sound that seemed to call the storm into waking being. In bastard duet with the thunderclaps, preceding and then rising in intensity with the mounting roar of the worsening sky …

It sounded like roaring. 

Like the roars of an animal unknown and thrilled with bloodlust for another hunt that was coming. 

TO BE CONTINUED…

The assistant watched the sun set blood red on the doomed little village. From on high, within one of the towers of Castle Dracula. It bathed the little commoners  place with the last of its lurid rays as it shot the sky with flame. Then it departed with one final flashing wink. The assistant kissed it goodbye, blew it away on his hand. 

And smiled. 

A sound then carried and traveled through all of the silent ancient cobwebbed castle: The familiar creak of hinges and wood… the opening of a coffin. A casket lid softly closed, as it was guided down by phantom hand… his master's power. 

The Countess. 

The dread sun had been banished for another night for her majesty, his great mistress, the master sorceress of the dark, now the princess of shadow-black. She was unrivaled now. The stupid little peasants hadn't a chance now, not a chance in hell. 

For the Countess herself must now be master of such a dominion… she must now control all hellfire and flame as she now commanded the wild and the beasts within it. 

And the town below… through fear and terror, they were now her subjects. 

Subjugated and made prostrate to her power, she took from them as she pleased, when and where she so desired. They all fell victim to her magic and her might. Her ripping drinking fangs of mutilation, a hunger unsated and boundless that nonetheless held them all prisoner. Such hunger was an abattoir disease…

All the pitiful dirt farmer villagers would soon fall and bleeding, be held in the ripping necromantic fangs of her mighty jaws, beautiful. And now bestial. Vulpine. Powerful. 

Soon they would all feel her bloodlusting mouth about their throats, they would all come to her as she nightsong bade them. Commanding them, the royalty that she truly was and that coursed through her unholy veins. 

She was part undead. Thanks to the magic. And the ritual of the biting chair. 

And the fangs of the Count. Whose castle they now held. 

And himself… he allows himself this small and private boast. It would never be appropriate to brandish it before the master, his beloved Countess. 

She entered the chamber where he dwelt, watching the last of the sun’s light, diminishing as it had fled, fade to a darker blue then die as it became truer black. 

Stars like jewels in the ebon curtain came to life as his great master came from behind and stood beside him. Her presence was intoxicating. Powerful. 

She might not ever know how much he truly loved her, it was not his station and with a bitter heart he knew that, but to be by her side and to aide her in domination of the pathetic world was enough. 

The closest he would likely ever get to being her lover. Only in his most private fantasies. Only in his wildest dreams. Secret. He musn't trouble the Lady Zaleska with such trivialities. They were beneath her. He knew that. 

“Has our little one awoken yet?" Zaleska asked the assistant. 

The assistant said with a bow and a smile: "No, no. You know how little ones can be. Slow risers. Not quick to take to feet and task, but she'll learn. She'll get better.” He bowed again, saying: “She has you, master, to look to for example. The finest lady of shadows that has ever doth existed on the face of this accursed earth.”

Zaleska smiled. Pleased. He was such a good and loyal man.  

A little voice went shrill at the entrance to the chamber. 

Carmilla shrieked with dark joy. 

“Yes! Yay! The sun has died again! The Lord's Eye has gone blind for another curtain of night and now we get to go out and play!" 

Zaleska and the assistant looked to the little one as she jumped up and down in the doorway with savage glee. So proud. 

Carmilla ran up to the pair, her new dark guardians and bastard companions of the shadowland. She jumped up and down some more. Cheering. Screaming. Shrieking. Squealing. Part small child joviality and part terrible aggressive animal bestial shriekings. 

She looked up to them again, to Zaleska. She worshipped her. Her undead uncanny gaze held pure corrupted adoration for the Countess. Her great master. 

She said again, asking this time like a small impatient child really wanting something. In part, she still was. But the other part, darker and more dominating now… that part tainted everything that the small demon animal in childshape did from then on. 

“We do, right? Now that the sun is dead and God is blind to the little sows, we can go out and play with them, right? Oh! … I want to so badly, master! We do now, right?”

"Yes, my servant. Yes, my child. We must. We are creatures that live to go out and play in the dark." Zaleska said soothingly, reassuringly. 

Carmilla cheered! Then catching herself, restrained her excitement, then gave a courtly curtsey and bow, saying: “Thank you, master. Thank you, Countess. Your power and wisdom are unrivaled." 

The wolves outside once more began their nightly song of predator's chase and claim, they began again this night like all others as of late, howling their music of blood and flesh and flame. Renewed. 

The children of the dark were all revived now and they took to the night once more, empowered with unholy rage. 

But as the vampires and their assistant prepared for another nocturnal hunt, another dark night of feeding on innocent human prey in the village below…

… many rivals, made, were approaching.

…

The bloodbags writhed in the dirt. The three that were left. Frankenstein's massive body-part patchwork nosferatu creation watched them from the mouth of the cave where it rested and protected itself from the sun. 

It had known, naturally, innate, it had known to fly from the face of the sun. It had known when it was born from the slab by lightning and black magic that the sun was its enemy. 

Known. In its blood. Knowledge that was animal down to the bone. Patchwork bones… sawn, broken… reshaped… fitted together into new more powerful form and size like godly and powerful puzzle pieces. 

Remade. 

Frankenstein’s nosferatu monster sniffed the air… blood… fear… and… better yet. 

The flight of the sun. 

Darkness returned and the black lands came alive again with fog. Great drifting veils of phantom white. The creation stepped free of the cave and closed the few steps to his captive bloodbags, now down to an unholy three.

He picked up the misshapen one. Almost dead, almost empty. Weak pathetic little thing…

It groaned as he sank his teeth into the softest part of the wretched little twist of flesh, the only part of the rotten little fruit the creation deemed worthy to put his newborn lips to. 

The tender meat beneath the hollow crook of the underarm. Just above the large artery there. 

He sucked and drank deeply and the little deformed man begged God and the devil and the creation itself as he slowly felt the life being pulled from him, with a savage hungry tug. All throughout his bent and mismanaged frame. 

He also cursed the name of Frankenstein again.  Henry Frankenstein and all of his fathers and sons and all of the women too! the bastards! 

Curse them! 

Egnaw knew he was going to die. He only hoped Frankenstein’s end would be even more painful. 

But the mad doctor might be dead already. Still unconscious since the many days since the night of the experiment and the towers fall. 

Collapsed. Explosion. Sabotage by the hand of the rival Doctor Praetorius. 

The bastard. 

The creation ripped its mouth away after a final draw off the bloodbag and chewed. Egnaw screamed. But it wasn't prolonged like it might be with anybody else. The little man servant slave was becoming even more attuned and accustomed to unyielding pain. In unyielding volumes. 

The creation threw him back into the dirt with the other two. Still chewing. 

It swallowed. 

And then howled at the moon. Crescent and sickle tonight. Like a curved scythes blade.

Then throaty and gurgling he spoke once more. The only word it seemed to want to speak since the day of its unnatural birth. 

“Frankenstein…!” 

Egnaw cringed. He hated the sound of its wretched voice. He remembered handling such vocal chords alongside the mad doctor in another lifetime, not long but so long ago and far away… 

The fortress stone of jagged rocks and what they held for him were near, but the creation slightly altered course. Veering ever so slightly in its direction for the Carpathian Mountains. It had caught a newer fresher scent. Closer. 

A man. Moving fast. On horseflesh. 

A rider. 

…

He moved with one thought dominating all else. Find him. Find the vampire killer.

Find Professor Van Helsing. 

Florin moved with near suicidal speed. His horse beneath him was strong and durable. But nonetheless, they were both growing more exhausted. Yet he feared to stop and make camp. He feared whatever may be stalking through the night. It may be the same evil that now lay siege to his little village. 

Darkness spreads as a shadow does grow…

he must be careful. 

But then suddenly the beast beneath him came to a near dead stop. Nearly throwing him as its hooves skidded and dug shallow trenches in the black earth. 

The horse was skittish. Prancing and refusing to settle beneath him. Refusing to go any further. 

Florin, already frustrated with the urgency of his task, began to chide and curse the animal. Trying to berate and spur him on forward to the next farm or village. More children or others back home in town could be dying right now as his stubborn stupid horse just danced and behaved foolish-

Snap! 

A branch or twig or something else broke in two in the night all about him. Somewhere in the dark. Florin shut his lips. And fell silent. 

Instantly gripped with dread. Fear mounting higher into terror. He was suddenly aware, certain that he was not at all out here alone with his horse. Something else was out here too. 

Something moving. 

He suppressed his galloping heart of terror and forced himself to listen. Listen for movement in the encompassing dark wood. 

His horse grew more anxious. It wanted to be off, to flee. 

Everything inside both rider and his steed told him to run. 

Run. Now. 

Fast. 

“Stop, now, you!" Florin hissed at his horse, “We've no time for trifling games!" 

“Your horse is smarter than you are, rider." 

Florin, shocked, almost let out a wail, but before he could the voice from out of the dark came again and calmly said. 

“Don't. Please. Don't be afraid. Don't scream. You'll get us all killed." A beat. “Just be quiet." 

Florin whispered to the dark: “Who are you?"

“Dismount and move slowly. To the bushes. Leave your horse. There is something out here." 

“Who are you, what're you talking about and why should I trust you?" Florin asked again. 

“There is something out here, my friend. I'm just a fellow traveler, and I've no wish to see another man butchered." A beat. “Now do as I say, or to hell with you." 

Florin considered it a moment… and then considered the surrounding dark. It seemed filled. With something hurtling. 

Something bounding like an eager jungle cat hunting sure prey. 

Florin quickly dismounted, grabbed his saddlebags and then ran to the voice as it called out once more. He scrambled in the bushes with a large dark gypsy man with long black hair, beneath swashbuckler scarf wrapped round his crown in a skullcap. He looked severe and he was desperately clutching something in his calloused hands. 

A rosary. A small wooden crucifix attached, dangled from the tear drop center. 

The gypsy looked at Florin with wide eyes filled to the whites with all of the night and its superstitious and terrible wonder. He brought a finger to his lips, in a gesture to bade the young man quiet. Then he pointed out into the night to tell him to watch. 

Florin did. 

The horse, reins tied to the branch of a nearby tree, was now more nervous and jumpy than ever. Florin had never before seen a trained and broken horse behave so strangely and so wild. 

And then it came out of the woods. Out of the night. Large and hulking. Eyes twinkling twin stars of blood red jewels in all of the surrounding oppressive dark. Set in a stitched up grotesque patchwork of a face that was both human and rat like, commingled and blasphemously mixed. A terrible mouth opened and moonlight glinted off the drooling tendril strands of bestial salivation and rabid animal slobber turning them into long translucent jewels of glass in the lunar glow. A pair of fangs, bone-white, gleamed amongst the rest of the mouth of rotten black. A miasma of decay and fecal stench, pungent and strong filled the cold space. Warming it with powerful foul and fetid odor, the heat of death. 

He growled. Seethed. It said a name then. One Florin swore he'd heard somewhere before. 

“Frankenstein…!”

The horse was in hysterics now. Its eyes rolling in wild terror as it kicked and reared and pranced in a frightful panic that only the animal can know. It hurt Florin's heart to see the beast as such.

What came next was much worse. 

One of the large powerful arms of reanimated muscle, rippling beneath pale blue corpse flesh, shot out and found the poor beast’s throat, ripping it out in a sudden blur of crimson and hide and tearing discolored claw. A heavy steaming gout of dark animal blood shot forth from the fresh open wound which also belched steam into the night. The large rotting patchwork nosferatu brought its face into the warm red dark cord of horse blood and began to catch it in its wide open mouth. Gulping. Lapping. Tonguing with wild abandon the red warm cord-stream. 

As the horse suddenly stilled, then wobbled, then fell against the tree to which it was tethered and began to sag down to the earth, the creation came in, bathing its horrid face in horrible animal scarlet baptism as its mouth closed the distance and met the fresh wound ripped from the large stout neck. 

Florin from the bushes, with his host of gypsy saviors, could hear deep heavy gulping – deep heavy pulls of drinking, and the crunch and relish of strenuous chewing. Raw meat being devoured as the throat worked heavily to pull in thick viscous liquid. His stomach lurched and he nearly vomited but he held it together. It was awful but he could not pull his eyes away from the scene. Neither could his fortunate band of gypsies host. They all watched. Spellbound in the most terrible way by that which is so arresting and magnetic because it is so appalling you cannot actually believe your very eyes. You cannot believe it is actually happening. 

The vulpine manmade nosferatu creation took its fill, then with great prodigious strength, it threw the dead weight of the horse over one mighty shoulder, and then bounded off into the night. Heavily breathing through gurgles and throaty laughter. 

Florin waited til he was sure the thing was gone, then he thanked the Lord aloud and crossed himself. 

The gypsies gave their own prayers of thanks in another language the rider didn’t understand. But he was sure he nonetheless knew and felt every word. 

Yes. Thank the Lord on High. God Help Us. 

Carefully and quietly they arose from their hiding place together. 

The man who’d saved him spoke first. 

“Now you know to be careful in the night, fellow traveler. But now you are without a horse. Come with us, on our wagon, we will give free ride to your village.”

Florin said kindly but firmly: “Thank you but you don’t understand, I’ve just come from there and I’ve been searching the past many nights, I must get back on my way… but I’ve no idea where to look…”

The rider fell despondent. The sight of the creation and its feasting on his ride still very vivid and fresh in his mind. And he’d been thus far so fruitless in his hunt. Aimless. Nowhere. He had no idea of where to go. 

“Come with us,” the man, seeing the young one’s crestfallen face said again, “we can give you horse and maybe direction.” A beat. He held out his hand, “We shall see.”

Florin looked up into the weathered gypsy face and took the traveler’s hand. 

And away they went. Back to the gypsy camp. Not far off. 

Once there Florin saw that the band of travelers were actually a family. A father, mother, three sons, four daughters, a babe, and an old woman.

Around a campfire, they all shared their tales. The gypsy family: their travels and adventures and the strange sights and beasts and otherworldly designs thereon. 

Florin told them of his village. The one that had lived and was now dying in the shadow of Castle Dracula. 

The gypsies all crossed themselves at the sound, the name of the place. 

Florin joined them. And followed suit. 

He told them he was sent out to find someone, a man that the township needed to deliver them from the evil that now beset upon them nightly and fed on them like cattle. 

“Who?” asked the old woman, the grandmother of the family band. She hadn’t spoken up til now, since the young rider’s arrival. 

“Professor Abraham Van Helsing.” Florin said. 

A murmur of excitement went all throughout the family then. 

Then the man, the father of the band turned to Florin with something like a smile on his weathered face and he said: –

“We know where you can find this man. We know where you can find this Van Helsing.”

…

Erin was proud of her friend, Florin, and she wished him Godspeed everyday in the many weeks that followed his departure. She prayed to God that he was not dead and that he'd surely found someone that could help them and deliver them from this dark period of slaughter. 

More had died since he had left. More children and more adults. Neither the elderly nor the lame nor nubile young were spared the possible cutthroat silence of the nightly butchery. And many more died slowly, as if by some disease of cruel design, loss of blood slowly drained and taken. Fed upon over time while some were given more immediate and ravenous animal treatment. 

No one knew who was next. The pattern was everywhere and animal and impossible for any of them to follow. Many had already lost heart and taken their own lives, or fled. 

Some said that Florin was long gone. Or dead. Not to be counted on in either case. 

But Erin held on and she kept praying. Even when her parents and her aunt disappeared one night. Even when her own little brother had taken with the blood-loss plague that doubtless emanated from Castle Dracula with merciless and heartless intent. The poor little one like so many others before had become bed ridden. Pale and listless, barely breathing up til the end. This morning. 

Only her most immediate neighbors had bothered coming over to help with the burial and the funerary rites. Nobody had seen the priest in many days. 

She'd wept so lost and broken then when the final shovelful of dirt had been thrown and the sparse few gathered had taken their leave. She was so alone now and she didn't know what to do anymore. Everything felt useless and hopeless, that they all just lived at the cruel whim and mercy of horror that they could not even see until it was at last felt, and then at last as final cruel torture you were allowed to gaze into its terrible face. As final reward and punishment altogether, rolled into one. 

Sheer torture. Sheer agony was all that poor Erin felt now. 

That was why she'd volunteered this night for sentry duty. None had spoken against it. They were all of them far too tired and broken of heart and spirit to care anymore. At the beginning it would've been unheard of, a young lady like herself, only nineteen years and unwed… but now it didn't matter. There weren't enough able bodied men left anymore anyways. 

So she'd been given lantern and pistol and a small cask of warm wine. To protect against the cold. 

And then she'd taken to her watch. The last one, relieving the midnight man at three after and taking the final post till dawn. Alone. In the dark. 

She tried so desperately not to weep. But she couldn't help herself. Alone out here in the cold all of the faces of all of the dead friends and children and poor old folk came back racing through her mind unbidden in a procession that she could not bear but couldn't run from either. 

Erin wept and prayed and begged God to help them, to bring him back. To please, have Florin successful and bringing back their deliverer, their savior! 

Please Lord! Please! 

Save Us! 

Someone else weeping, a child crying, off in the dark somewhere, brought young Erin out her thoughts and prayers. 

A little startled she tried to spy out, holding the lantern aloft out into the dark, and she called: –

“Hello? Is someone there?" 

No word … but more weeping. 

A child's. A little girl's … by the sound. 

Forgetting herself and suddenly terrified for the thought of a small child out here alone with so much evil about, Erin flew forward with lantern held ahead and the pistol of her charge o’the night cocked. 

It wasn't long before she found the small little girl. In a horrible filthy dress, as if the child had been lost for weeks in the woods in naught but her pajamas. 

The child was turned away and bent and crying in her hands. Sobbing. 

Erin felt terrible for the little one, she went to her without any further hesitation, calling to the girl:

“Are you alright!? Oh my God, how did you get out here? Where are your parents? What're you doing out here, little one?" 

The child did not free her face but continued to weep, trying to speak through her crown cries and her sodden little fingers. 

“M-my, my-ma-mama…" 

Erin set the pistol aside as she knelt to the child and gently put her hands on her shoulders. The poor thing…

“It's ok, I'll get you home. Who's your mother? What's your name, little one?" she asked softly. 

The little girl stopped crying abruptly. But still she kept her face buried in her hands. 

Yet her voice was much clearer now, when finally she said: – 

"My name is Carmilla, Erin of Thoten. Thank you for asking.”

Erin suddenly felt cold and faint and as if her heart and chest had suddenly filled with dropping weight. She wondered fleetingly for that split second if this was the prelude to death, yet another heart breaking. She understood and knew that something was terribly wrong right away. 

Carmilla had been dead and gone for months now. Way back at nearly the start of all this relentless terror. 

Carmilla whirled suddenly. In the moonlight dark her face was both brilliant and youthful and pugnacious dog-like and goblin. She smiled and bore animal fangs and hissed like a rodent that carried disease. 

Erin flung herself back. In her sudden sprawl she fumbled for the pistol but her hand in its panic had only succeeded in shoving it further away. Out of reach. 

Carmilla laughed and tittered. Rodent squeals and bat-like screeches commingled with a child's giggles. 

Her eyes were flickering. Pinkish red dots that shone at the centers. Vulpine face drawn as she brandished fangs and continued to emit her strange abominated titters. 

“You're so kind, Erin. You always were. And if you're still wondering, my mother is just right there…” 

She pointed one clawed little finger out into the further dark. Erin was helpless but to look. 

And she saw her emerge from the ebon pitch of night in which she lorded and held as her ultimate domain. Clad in phantom white gown that darkled and shifted and changed to royal crimson red that was heavy and wet in spots, changing and shifting back and again with every advancing ghostly step. Her face was also phantom pale, so much so that it shone in the postmidnight pitch black like an unholy beacon, but yet she was beautiful. And terrible. Luciferian and unearthly driven. Her dark hair, a curtain of night unto itself, flowing out like a royal cape, as if caught in some unseen and unfelt wind. 

She came forward. And then like her dress, her Luciferian face began to change and dance and shift. 

Animal - wolf - rat - feline - insect - toad - bat - unknown - and then a rotten visage that was corpselike with the decay of the grave and a bastard conglomerate amalgamation of all her dancing shifted faces…

… then back to the one of beauty as she came upon poor Erin, sprawled on the cobble stones in the dark and at her feet and speechless. 

At the feet of Countess Zaleska, lord and master of Castle Dracula. Lord of the lands now through her awesome power and bloodthirst that could never be quenched. 

She said something then, before she finished the child –

“I've heard you, Erin. I have heard you. Although God has not heard your prayers, I have heard every word, I've listened every time, I've watched and relished as you shed each and every single tear, til now. Now, dear child, I, and not God, I am here to answer your prayers!" 

Carmilla laughed shrill rodent squeals as Erin shrieked one last final bottled shriek and Countess Zaleska came in with her bright fangs barred and descended. 

Erin died shrieking as they tore her apart. Still hoping and believing that Florin might come back and save them, that he might come back right now and save her. 

Many, the few that were left, heard her screams and struggles and the heavy sounds of wet fabric tearing and bones splintering and breaking, snapping. Slurping…

… Deep soupy pulls of drinking and chewing and laughter around mouthfuls of raw fresh meat. Nearly all of them that were left heard what was happening. 

But none came out. 

None came out to do anything about it. 

So the Countess Zaleska and her little Carmilla enjoyed a feast of yet another poor peasant girl. 

As the tattered remnants of the small village just listened and bore it. All night. 

All night until the dawn. 

Some of them were at least grateful for the coming rain, they could hear its booming and thunder now. They would be grateful for the rainfall to come and wash what was left of the young girl away from the cobblestones that so many of them had once swept and cared for and silently cherished. 

No more. 

Now they were just happy for the rain. It would wash the Erin girl's blood away, her last spent and violent red. 

But … those few, … they weren't so happy nor gladdened by the sound that seemed to call the storm into waking being. In bastard duet with the thunderclaps, preceding and then rising in intensity with the mounting roar of the worsening sky …

It sounded like roaring. 

Like the roars of an animal unknown and thrilled with bloodlust for another hunt that was coming. 

TO BE CONTINUED…

The assistant watched the sun set blood red on the doomed little village. From on high, within one of the towers of Castle Dracula. It bathed the little commoners  place with the last of its lurid rays as it shot the sky with flame. Then it departed with one final flashing wink. The assistant kissed it goodbye, blew it away on his hand. 

And smiled. 

A sound then carried and traveled through all of the silent ancient cobwebbed castle: The familiar creak of hinges and wood… the opening of a coffin. A casket lid softly closed, as it was guided down by phantom hand… his master's power. 

The Countess. 

The dread sun had been banished for another night for her majesty, his great mistress, the master sorceress of the dark, now the princess of shadow-black. She was unrivaled now. The stupid little peasants hadn't a chance now, not a chance in hell. 

For the Countess herself must now be master of such a dominion… she must now control all hellfire and flame as she now commanded the wild and the beasts within it. 

And the town below… through fear and terror, they were now her subjects. 

Subjugated and made prostrate to her power, she took from them as she pleased, when and where she so desired. They all fell victim to her magic and her might. Her ripping drinking fangs of mutilation, a hunger unsated and boundless that nonetheless held them all prisoner. Such hunger was an abattoir disease…

All the pitiful dirt farmer villagers would soon fall and bleeding, be held in the ripping necromantic fangs of her mighty jaws, beautiful. And now bestial. Vulpine. Powerful. 

Soon they would all feel her bloodlusting mouth about their throats, they would all come to her as she nightsong bade them. Commanding them, the royalty that she truly was and that coursed through her unholy veins. 

She was part undead. Thanks to the magic. And the ritual of the biting chair. 

And the fangs of the Count. Whose castle they now held. 

And himself… he allows himself this small and private boast. It would never be appropriate to brandish it before the master, his beloved Countess. 

She entered the chamber where he dwelt, watching the last of the sun’s light, diminishing as it had fled, fade to a darker blue then die as it became truer black. 

Stars like jewels in the ebon curtain came to life as his great master came from behind and stood beside him. Her presence was intoxicating. Powerful. 

She might not ever know how much he truly loved her, it was not his station and with a bitter heart he knew that, but to be by her side and to aide her in domination of the pathetic world was enough. 

The closest he would likely ever get to being her lover. Only in his most private fantasies. Only in his wildest dreams. Secret. He musn't trouble the Lady Zaleska with such trivialities. They were beneath her. He knew that. 

“Has our little one awoken yet?" Zaleska asked the assistant. 

The assistant said with a bow and a smile: "No, no. You know how little ones can be. Slow risers. Not quick to take to feet and task, but she'll learn. She'll get better.” He bowed again, saying: “She has you, master, to look to for example. The finest lady of shadows that has ever doth existed on the face of this accursed earth.”

Zaleska smiled. Pleased. He was such a good and loyal man.  

A little voice went shrill at the entrance to the chamber. 

Carmilla shrieked with dark joy. 

“Yes! Yay! The sun has died again! The Lord's Eye has gone blind for another curtain of night and now we get to go out and play!" 

Zaleska and the assistant looked to the little one as she jumped up and down in the doorway with savage glee. So proud. 

Carmilla ran up to the pair, her new dark guardians and bastard companions of the shadowland. She jumped up and down some more. Cheering. Screaming. Shrieking. Squealing. Part small child joviality and part terrible aggressive animal bestial shriekings. 

She looked up to them again, to Zaleska. She worshipped her. Her undead uncanny gaze held pure corrupted adoration for the Countess. Her great master. 

She said again, asking this time like a small impatient child really wanting something. In part, she still was. But the other part, darker and more dominating now… that part tainted everything that the small demon animal in childshape did from then on. 

“We do, right? Now that the sun is dead and God is blind to the little sows, we can go out and play with them, right? Oh! … I want to so badly, master! We do now, right?”

"Yes, my servant. Yes, my child. We must. We are creatures that live to go out and play in the dark." Zaleska said soothingly, reassuringly. 

Carmilla cheered! Then catching herself, restrained her excitement, then gave a courtly curtsey and bow, saying: “Thank you, master. Thank you, Countess. Your power and wisdom are unrivaled." 

The wolves outside once more began their nightly song of predator's chase and claim, they began again this night like all others as of late, howling their music of blood and flesh and flame. Renewed. 

The children of the dark were all revived now and they took to the night once more, empowered with unholy rage. 

But as the vampires and their assistant prepared for another nocturnal hunt, another dark night of feeding on innocent human prey in the village below…

… many rivals, made, were approaching.

…

The bloodbags writhed in the dirt. The three that were left. Frankenstein's massive body-part patchwork nosferatu creation watched them from the mouth of the cave where it rested and protected itself from the sun. 

It had known, naturally, innate, it had known to fly from the face of the sun. It had known when it was born from the slab by lightning and black magic that the sun was its enemy. 

Known. In its blood. Knowledge that was animal down to the bone. Patchwork bones… sawn, broken… reshaped… fitted together into new more powerful form and size like godly and powerful puzzle pieces. 

Remade. 

Frankenstein’s nosferatu monster sniffed the air… blood… fear… and… better yet. 

The flight of the sun. 

Darkness returned and the black lands came alive again with fog. Great drifting veils of phantom white. The creation stepped free of the cave and closed the few steps to his captive bloodbags, now down to an unholy three.

He picked up the misshapen one. Almost dead, almost empty. Weak pathetic little thing…

It groaned as he sank his teeth into the softest part of the wretched little twist of flesh, the only part of the rotten little fruit the creation deemed worthy to put his newborn lips to. 

The tender meat beneath the hollow crook of the underarm. Just above the large artery there. 

He sucked and drank deeply and the little deformed man begged God and the devil and the creation itself as he slowly felt the life being pulled from him, with a savage hungry tug. All throughout his bent and mismanaged frame. 

He also cursed the name of Frankenstein again.  Henry Frankenstein and all of his fathers and sons and all of the women too! the bastards! 

Curse them! 

Egnaw knew he was going to die. He only hoped Frankenstein’s end would be even more painful. 

But the mad doctor might be dead already. Still unconscious since the many days since the night of the experiment and the towers fall. 

Collapsed. Explosion. Sabotage by the hand of the rival Doctor Praetorius. 

The bastard. 

The creation ripped its mouth away after a final draw off the bloodbag and chewed. Egnaw screamed. But it wasn't prolonged like it might be with anybody else. The little man servant slave was becoming even more attuned and accustomed to unyielding pain. In unyielding volumes. 

The creation threw him back into the dirt with the other two. Still chewing. 

It swallowed. 

And then howled at the moon. Crescent and sickle tonight. Like a curved scythes blade.

Then throaty and gurgling he spoke once more. The only word it seemed to want to speak since the day of its unnatural birth. 

“Frankenstein…!” 

Egnaw cringed. He hated the sound of its wretched voice. He remembered handling such vocal chords alongside the mad doctor in another lifetime, not long but so long ago and far away… 

The fortress stone of jagged rocks and what they held for him were near, but the creation slightly altered course. Veering ever so slightly in its direction for the Carpathian Mountains. It had caught a newer fresher scent. Closer. 

A man. Moving fast. On horseflesh. 

A rider. 

…

He moved with one thought dominating all else. Find him. Find the vampire killer.

Find Professor Van Helsing. 

Florin moved with near suicidal speed. His horse beneath him was strong and durable. But nonetheless, they were both growing more exhausted. Yet he feared to stop and make camp. He feared whatever may be stalking through the night. It may be the same evil that now lay siege to his little village. 

Darkness spreads as a shadow does grow…

he must be careful. 

But then suddenly the beast beneath him came to a near dead stop. Nearly throwing him as its hooves skidded and dug shallow trenches in the black earth. 

The horse was skittish. Prancing and refusing to settle beneath him. Refusing to go any further. 

Florin, already frustrated with the urgency of his task, began to chide and curse the animal. Trying to berate and spur him on forward to the next farm or village. More children or others back home in town could be dying right now as his stubborn stupid horse just danced and behaved foolish-

Snap! 

A branch or twig or something else broke in two in the night all about him. Somewhere in the dark. Florin shut his lips. And fell silent. 

Instantly gripped with dread. Fear mounting higher into terror. He was suddenly aware, certain that he was not at all out here alone with his horse. Something else was out here too. 

Something moving. 

He suppressed his galloping heart of terror and forced himself to listen. Listen for movement in the encompassing dark wood. 

His horse grew more anxious. It wanted to be off, to flee. 

Everything inside both rider and his steed told him to run. 

Run. Now. 

Fast. 

“Stop, now, you!" Florin hissed at his horse, “We've no time for trifling games!" 

“Your horse is smarter than you are, rider." 

Florin, shocked, almost let out a wail, but before he could the voice from out of the dark came again and calmly said. 

“Don't. Please. Don't be afraid. Don't scream. You'll get us all killed." A beat. “Just be quiet." 

Florin whispered to the dark: “Who are you?"

“Dismount and move slowly. To the bushes. Leave your horse. There is something out here." 

“Who are you, what're you talking about and why should I trust you?" Florin asked again. 

“There is something out here, my friend. I'm just a fellow traveler, and I've no wish to see another man butchered." A beat. “Now do as I say, or to hell with you." 

Florin considered it a moment… and then considered the surrounding dark. It seemed filled. With something hurtling. 

Something bounding like an eager jungle cat hunting sure prey. 

Florin quickly dismounted, grabbed his saddlebags and then ran to the voice as it called out once more. He scrambled in the bushes with a large dark gypsy man with long black hair, beneath swashbuckler scarf wrapped round his crown in a skullcap. He looked severe and he was desperately clutching something in his calloused hands. 

A rosary. A small wooden crucifix attached, dangled from the tear drop center. 

The gypsy looked at Florin with wide eyes filled to the whites with all of the night and its superstitious and terrible wonder. He brought a finger to his lips, in a gesture to bade the young man quiet. Then he pointed out into the night to tell him to watch. 

Florin did. 

The horse, reins tied to the branch of a nearby tree, was now more nervous and jumpy than ever. Florin had never before seen a trained and broken horse behave so strangely and so wild. 

And then it came out of the woods. Out of the night. Large and hulking. Eyes twinkling twin stars of blood red jewels in all of the surrounding oppressive dark. Set in a stitched up grotesque patchwork of a face that was both human and rat like, commingled and blasphemously mixed. A terrible mouth opened and moonlight glinted off the drooling tendril strands of bestial salivation and rabid animal slobber turning them into long translucent jewels of glass in the lunar glow. A pair of fangs, bone-white, gleamed amongst the rest of the mouth of rotten black. A miasma of decay and fecal stench, pungent and strong filled the cold space. Warming it with powerful foul and fetid odor, the heat of death. 

He growled. Seethed. It said a name then. One Florin swore he'd heard somewhere before. 

“Frankenstein…!”

The horse was in hysterics now. Its eyes rolling in wild terror as it kicked and reared and pranced in a frightful panic that only the animal can know. It hurt Florin's heart to see the beast as such.

What came next was much worse. 

One of the large powerful arms of reanimated muscle, rippling beneath pale blue corpse flesh, shot out and found the poor beast’s throat, ripping it out in a sudden blur of crimson and hide and tearing discolored claw. A heavy steaming gout of dark animal blood shot forth from the fresh open wound which also belched steam into the night. The large rotting patchwork nosferatu brought its face into the warm red dark cord of horse blood and began to catch it in its wide open mouth. Gulping. Lapping. Tonguing with wild abandon the red warm cord-stream. 

As the horse suddenly stilled, then wobbled, then fell against the tree to which it was tethered and began to sag down to the earth, the creation came in, bathing its horrid face in horrible animal scarlet baptism as its mouth closed the distance and met the fresh wound ripped from the large stout neck. 

Florin from the bushes, with his host of gypsy saviors, could hear deep heavy gulping – deep heavy pulls of drinking, and the crunch and relish of strenuous chewing. Raw meat being devoured as the throat worked heavily to pull in thick viscous liquid. His stomach lurched and he nearly vomited but he held it together. It was awful but he could not pull his eyes away from the scene. Neither could his fortunate band of gypsies host. They all watched. Spellbound in the most terrible way by that which is so arresting and magnetic because it is so appalling you cannot actually believe your very eyes. You cannot believe it is actually happening. 

The vulpine manmade nosferatu creation took its fill, then with great prodigious strength, it threw the dead weight of the horse over one mighty shoulder, and then bounded off into the night. Heavily breathing through gurgles and throaty laughter. 

Florin waited til he was sure the thing was gone, then he thanked the Lord aloud and crossed himself. 

The gypsies gave their own prayers of thanks in another language the rider didn’t understand. But he was sure he nonetheless knew and felt every word. 

Yes. Thank the Lord on High. God Help Us. 

Carefully and quietly they arose from their hiding place together. 

The man who’d saved him spoke first. 

“Now you know to be careful in the night, fellow traveler. But now you are without a horse. Come with us, on our wagon, we will give free ride to your village.”

Florin said kindly but firmly: “Thank you but you don’t understand, I’ve just come from there and I’ve been searching the past many nights, I must get back on my way… but I’ve no idea where to look…”

The rider fell despondent. The sight of the creation and its feasting on his ride still very vivid and fresh in his mind. And he’d been thus far so fruitless in his hunt. Aimless. Nowhere. He had no idea of where to go. 

“Come with us,” the man, seeing the young one’s crestfallen face said again, “we can give you horse and maybe direction.” A beat. He held out his hand, “We shall see.”

Florin looked up into the weathered gypsy face and took the traveler’s hand. 

And away they went. Back to the gypsy camp. Not far off. 

Once there Florin saw that the band of travelers were actually a family. A father, mother, three sons, four daughters, a babe, and an old woman.

Around a campfire, they all shared their tales. The gypsy family: their travels and adventures and the strange sights and beasts and otherworldly designs thereon. 

Florin told them of his village. The one that had lived and was now dying in the shadow of Castle Dracula. 

The gypsies all crossed themselves at the sound, the name of the place. 

Florin joined them. And followed suit. 

He told them he was sent out to find someone, a man that the township needed to deliver them from the evil that now beset upon them nightly and fed on them like cattle. 

“Who?” asked the old woman, the grandmother of the family band. She hadn’t spoken up til now, since the young rider’s arrival. 

“Professor Abraham Van Helsing.” Florin said. 

A murmur of excitement went all throughout the family then. 

Then the man, the father of the band turned to Florin with something like a smile on his weathered face and he said: –

“We know where you can find this man. We know where you can find this Van Helsing.”

…

Erin was proud of her friend, Florin, and she wished him Godspeed everyday in the many weeks that followed his departure. She prayed to God that he was not dead and that he'd surely found someone that could help them and deliver them from this dark period of slaughter. 

More had died since he had left. More children and more adults. Neither the elderly nor the lame nor nubile young were spared the possible cutthroat silence of the nightly butchery. And many more died slowly, as if by some disease of cruel design, loss of blood slowly drained and taken. Fed upon over time while some were given more immediate and ravenous animal treatment. 

No one knew who was next. The pattern was everywhere and animal and impossible for any of them to follow. Many had already lost heart and taken their own lives, or fled. 

Some said that Florin was long gone. Or dead. Not to be counted on in either case. 

But Erin held on and she kept praying. Even when her parents and her aunt disappeared one night. Even when her own little brother had taken with the blood-loss plague that doubtless emanated from Castle Dracula with merciless and heartless intent. The poor little one like so many others before had become bed ridden. Pale and listless, barely breathing up til the end. This morning. 

Only her most immediate neighbors had bothered coming over to help with the burial and the funerary rites. Nobody had seen the priest in many days. 

She'd wept so lost and broken then when the final shovelful of dirt had been thrown and the sparse few gathered had taken their leave. She was so alone now and she didn't know what to do anymore. Everything felt useless and hopeless, that they all just lived at the cruel whim and mercy of horror that they could not even see until it was at last felt, and then at last as final cruel torture you were allowed to gaze into its terrible face. As final reward and punishment altogether, rolled into one. 

Sheer torture. Sheer agony was all that poor Erin felt now. 

That was why she'd volunteered this night for sentry duty. None had spoken against it. They were all of them far too tired and broken of heart and spirit to care anymore. At the beginning it would've been unheard of, a young lady like herself, only nineteen years and unwed… but now it didn't matter. There weren't enough able bodied men left anymore anyways. 

So she'd been given lantern and pistol and a small cask of warm wine. To protect against the cold. 

And then she'd taken to her watch. The last one, relieving the midnight man at three after and taking the final post till dawn. Alone. In the dark. 

She tried so desperately not to weep. But she couldn't help herself. Alone out here in the cold all of the faces of all of the dead friends and children and poor old folk came back racing through her mind unbidden in a procession that she could not bear but couldn't run from either. 

Erin wept and prayed and begged God to help them, to bring him back. To please, have Florin successful and bringing back their deliverer, their savior! 

Please Lord! Please! 

Save Us! 

Someone else weeping, a child crying, off in the dark somewhere, brought young Erin out her thoughts and prayers. 

A little startled she tried to spy out, holding the lantern aloft out into the dark, and she called: –

“Hello? Is someone there?" 

No word … but more weeping. 

A child's. A little girl's … by the sound. 

Forgetting herself and suddenly terrified for the thought of a small child out here alone with so much evil about, Erin flew forward with lantern held ahead and the pistol of her charge o’the night cocked. 

It wasn't long before she found the small little girl. In a horrible filthy dress, as if the child had been lost for weeks in the woods in naught but her pajamas. 

The child was turned away and bent and crying in her hands. Sobbing. 

Erin felt terrible for the little one, she went to her without any further hesitation, calling to the girl:

“Are you alright!? Oh my God, how did you get out here? Where are your parents? What're you doing out here, little one?" 

The child did not free her face but continued to weep, trying to speak through her crown cries and her sodden little fingers. 

“M-my, my-ma-mama…" 

Erin set the pistol aside as she knelt to the child and gently put her hands on her shoulders. The poor thing…

“It's ok, I'll get you home. Who's your mother? What's your name, little one?" she asked softly. 

The little girl stopped crying abruptly. But still she kept her face buried in her hands. 

Yet her voice was much clearer now, when finally she said: – 

"My name is Carmilla, Erin of Thoten. Thank you for asking.”

Erin suddenly felt cold and faint and as if her heart and chest had suddenly filled with dropping weight. She wondered fleetingly for that split second if this was the prelude to death, yet another heart breaking. She understood and knew that something was terribly wrong right away. 

Carmilla had been dead and gone for months now. Way back at nearly the start of all this relentless terror. 

Carmilla whirled suddenly. In the moonlight dark her face was both brilliant and youthful and pugnacious dog-like and goblin. She smiled and bore animal fangs and hissed like a rodent that carried disease. 

Erin flung herself back. In her sudden sprawl she fumbled for the pistol but her hand in its panic had only succeeded in shoving it further away. Out of reach. 

Carmilla laughed and tittered. Rodent squeals and bat-like screeches commingled with a child's giggles. 

Her eyes were flickering. Pinkish red dots that shone at the centers. Vulpine face drawn as she brandished fangs and continued to emit her strange abominated titters. 

“You're so kind, Erin. You always were. And if you're still wondering, my mother is just right there…” 

She pointed one clawed little finger out into the further dark. Erin was helpless but to look. 

And she saw her emerge from the ebon pitch of night in which she lorded and held as her ultimate domain. Clad in phantom white gown that darkled and shifted and changed to royal crimson red that was heavy and wet in spots, changing and shifting back and again with every advancing ghostly step. Her face was also phantom pale, so much so that it shone in the postmidnight pitch black like an unholy beacon, but yet she was beautiful. And terrible. Luciferian and unearthly driven. Her dark hair, a curtain of night unto itself, flowing out like a royal cape, as if caught in some unseen and unfelt wind. 

She came forward. And then like her dress, her Luciferian face began to change and dance and shift. 

Animal - wolf - rat - feline - insect - toad - bat - unknown - and then a rotten visage that was corpselike with the decay of the grave and a bastard conglomerate amalgamation of all her dancing shifted faces…

… then back to the one of beauty as she came upon poor Erin, sprawled on the cobble stones in the dark and at her feet and speechless. 

At the feet of Countess Zaleska, lord and master of Castle Dracula. Lord of the lands now through her awesome power and bloodthirst that could never be quenched. 

She said something then, before she finished the child –

“I've heard you, Erin. I have heard you. Although God has not heard your prayers, I have heard every word, I've listened every time, I've watched and relished as you shed each and every single tear, til now. Now, dear child, I, and not God, I am here to answer your prayers!" 

Carmilla laughed shrill rodent squeals as Erin shrieked one last final bottled shriek and Countess Zaleska came in with her bright fangs barred and descended. 

Erin died shrieking as they tore her apart. Still hoping and believing that Florin might come back and save them, that he might come back right now and save her. 

Many, the few that were left, heard her screams and struggles and the heavy sounds of wet fabric tearing and bones splintering and breaking, snapping. Slurping…

… Deep soupy pulls of drinking and chewing and laughter around mouthfuls of raw fresh meat. Nearly all of them that were left heard what was happening. 

But none came out. 

None came out to do anything about it. 

So the Countess Zaleska and her little Carmilla enjoyed a feast of yet another poor peasant girl. 

As the tattered remnants of the small village just listened and bore it. All night. 

All night until the dawn. 

Some of them were at least grateful for the coming rain, they could hear its booming and thunder now. They would be grateful for the rainfall to come and wash what was left of the young girl away from the cobblestones that so many of them had once swept and cared for and silently cherished. 

No more. 

Now they were just happy for the rain. It would wash the Erin girl's blood away, her last spent and violent red. 

But … those few, … they weren't so happy nor gladdened by the sound that seemed to call the storm into waking being. In bastard duet with the thunderclaps, preceding and then rising in intensity with the mounting roar of the worsening sky …

It sounded like roaring. 

Like the roars of an animal unknown and thrilled with bloodlust for another hunt that was coming. 

TO BE CONTINUED…

The assistant watched the sun set blood red on the doomed little village. From on high, within one of the towers of Castle Dracula. It bathed the little commoners  place with the last of its lurid rays as it shot the sky with flame. Then it departed with one final flashing wink. The assistant kissed it goodbye, blew it away on his hand. 

And smiled. 

A sound then carried and traveled through all of the silent ancient cobwebbed castle: The familiar creak of hinges and wood… the opening of a coffin. A casket lid softly closed, as it was guided down by phantom hand… his master's power. 

The Countess. 

The dread sun had been banished for another night for her majesty, his great mistress, the master sorceress of the dark, now the princess of shadow-black. She was unrivaled now. The stupid little peasants hadn't a chance now, not a chance in hell. 

For the Countess herself must now be master of such a dominion… she must now control all hellfire and flame as she now commanded the wild and the beasts within it. 

And the town below… through fear and terror, they were now her subjects. 

Subjugated and made prostrate to her power, she took from them as she pleased, when and where she so desired. They all fell victim to her magic and her might. Her ripping drinking fangs of mutilation, a hunger unsated and boundless that nonetheless held them all prisoner. Such hunger was an abattoir disease…

All the pitiful dirt farmer villagers would soon fall and bleeding, be held in the ripping necromantic fangs of her mighty jaws, beautiful. And now bestial. Vulpine. Powerful. 

Soon they would all feel her bloodlusting mouth about their throats, they would all come to her as she nightsong bade them. Commanding them, the royalty that she truly was and that coursed through her unholy veins. 

She was part undead. Thanks to the magic. And the ritual of the biting chair. 

And the fangs of the Count. Whose castle they now held. 

And himself… he allows himself this small and private boast. It would never be appropriate to brandish it before the master, his beloved Countess. 

She entered the chamber where he dwelt, watching the last of the sun’s light, diminishing as it had fled, fade to a darker blue then die as it became truer black. 

Stars like jewels in the ebon curtain came to life as his great master came from behind and stood beside him. Her presence was intoxicating. Powerful. 

She might not ever know how much he truly loved her, it was not his station and with a bitter heart he knew that, but to be by her side and to aide her in domination of the pathetic world was enough. 

The closest he would likely ever get to being her lover. Only in his most private fantasies. Only in his wildest dreams. Secret. He musn't trouble the Lady Zaleska with such trivialities. They were beneath her. He knew that. 

“Has our little one awoken yet?" Zaleska asked the assistant. 

The assistant said with a bow and a smile: "No, no. You know how little ones can be. Slow risers. Not quick to take to feet and task, but she'll learn. She'll get better.” He bowed again, saying: “She has you, master, to look to for example. The finest lady of shadows that has ever doth existed on the face of this accursed earth.”

Zaleska smiled. Pleased. He was such a good and loyal man.  

A little voice went shrill at the entrance to the chamber. 

Carmilla shrieked with dark joy. 

“Yes! Yay! The sun has died again! The Lord's Eye has gone blind for another curtain of night and now we get to go out and play!" 

Zaleska and the assistant looked to the little one as she jumped up and down in the doorway with savage glee. So proud. 

Carmilla ran up to the pair, her new dark guardians and bastard companions of the shadowland. She jumped up and down some more. Cheering. Screaming. Shrieking. Squealing. Part small child joviality and part terrible aggressive animal bestial shriekings. 

She looked up to them again, to Zaleska. She worshipped her. Her undead uncanny gaze held pure corrupted adoration for the Countess. Her great master. 

She said again, asking this time like a small impatient child really wanting something. In part, she still was. But the other part, darker and more dominating now… that part tainted everything that the small demon animal in childshape did from then on. 

“We do, right? Now that the sun is dead and God is blind to the little sows, we can go out and play with them, right? Oh! … I want to so badly, master! We do now, right?”

"Yes, my servant. Yes, my child. We must. We are creatures that live to go out and play in the dark." Zaleska said soothingly, reassuringly. 

Carmilla cheered! Then catching herself, restrained her excitement, then gave a courtly curtsey and bow, saying: “Thank you, master. Thank you, Countess. Your power and wisdom are unrivaled." 

The wolves outside once more began their nightly song of predator's chase and claim, they began again this night like all others as of late, howling their music of blood and flesh and flame. Renewed. 

The children of the dark were all revived now and they took to the night once more, empowered with unholy rage. 

But as the vampires and their assistant prepared for another nocturnal hunt, another dark night of feeding on innocent human prey in the village below…

… many rivals, made, were approaching.

…

The bloodbags writhed in the dirt. The three that were left. Frankenstein's massive body-part patchwork nosferatu creation watched them from the mouth of the cave where it rested and protected itself from the sun. 

It had known, naturally, innate, it had known to fly from the face of the sun. It had known when it was born from the slab by lightning and black magic that the sun was its enemy. 

Known. In its blood. Knowledge that was animal down to the bone. Patchwork bones… sawn, broken… reshaped… fitted together into new more powerful form and size like godly and powerful puzzle pieces. 

Remade. 

Frankenstein’s nosferatu monster sniffed the air… blood… fear… and… better yet. 

The flight of the sun. 

Darkness returned and the black lands came alive again with fog. Great drifting veils of phantom white. The creation stepped free of the cave and closed the few steps to his captive bloodbags, now down to an unholy three.

He picked up the misshapen one. Almost dead, almost empty. Weak pathetic little thing…

It groaned as he sank his teeth into the softest part of the wretched little twist of flesh, the only part of the rotten little fruit the creation deemed worthy to put his newborn lips to. 

The tender meat beneath the hollow crook of the underarm. Just above the large artery there. 

He sucked and drank deeply and the little deformed man begged God and the devil and the creation itself as he slowly felt the life being pulled from him, with a savage hungry tug. All throughout his bent and mismanaged frame. 

He also cursed the name of Frankenstein again.  Henry Frankenstein and all of his fathers and sons and all of the women too! the bastards! 

Curse them! 

Egnaw knew he was going to die. He only hoped Frankenstein’s end would be even more painful. 

But the mad doctor might be dead already. Still unconscious since the many days since the night of the experiment and the towers fall. 

Collapsed. Explosion. Sabotage by the hand of the rival Doctor Praetorius. 

The bastard. 

The creation ripped its mouth away after a final draw off the bloodbag and chewed. Egnaw screamed. But it wasn't prolonged like it might be with anybody else. The little man servant slave was becoming even more attuned and accustomed to unyielding pain. In unyielding volumes. 

The creation threw him back into the dirt with the other two. Still chewing. 

It swallowed. 

And then howled at the moon. Crescent and sickle tonight. Like a curved scythes blade.

Then throaty and gurgling he spoke once more. The only word it seemed to want to speak since the day of its unnatural birth. 

“Frankenstein…!” 

Egnaw cringed. He hated the sound of its wretched voice. He remembered handling such vocal chords alongside the mad doctor in another lifetime, not long but so long ago and far away… 

The fortress stone of jagged rocks and what they held for him were near, but the creation slightly altered course. Veering ever so slightly in its direction for the Carpathian Mountains. It had caught a newer fresher scent. Closer. 

A man. Moving fast. On horseflesh. 

A rider. 

…

He moved with one thought dominating all else. Find him. Find the vampire killer.

Find Professor Van Helsing. 

Florin moved with near suicidal speed. His horse beneath him was strong and durable. But nonetheless, they were both growing more exhausted. Yet he feared to stop and make camp. He feared whatever may be stalking through the night. It may be the same evil that now lay siege to his little village. 

Darkness spreads as a shadow does grow…

he must be careful. 

But then suddenly the beast beneath him came to a near dead stop. Nearly throwing him as its hooves skidded and dug shallow trenches in the black earth. 

The horse was skittish. Prancing and refusing to settle beneath him. Refusing to go any further. 

Florin, already frustrated with the urgency of his task, began to chide and curse the animal. Trying to berate and spur him on forward to the next farm or village. More children or others back home in town could be dying right now as his stubborn stupid horse just danced and behaved foolish-

Snap! 

A branch or twig or something else broke in two in the night all about him. Somewhere in the dark. Florin shut his lips. And fell silent. 

Instantly gripped with dread. Fear mounting higher into terror. He was suddenly aware, certain that he was not at all out here alone with his horse. Something else was out here too. 

Something moving. 

He suppressed his galloping heart of terror and forced himself to listen. Listen for movement in the encompassing dark wood. 

His horse grew more anxious. It wanted to be off, to flee. 

Everything inside both rider and his steed told him to run. 

Run. Now. 

Fast. 

“Stop, now, you!" Florin hissed at his horse, “We've no time for trifling games!" 

“Your horse is smarter than you are, rider." 

Florin, shocked, almost let out a wail, but before he could the voice from out of the dark came again and calmly said. 

“Don't. Please. Don't be afraid. Don't scream. You'll get us all killed." A beat. “Just be quiet." 

Florin whispered to the dark: “Who are you?"

“Dismount and move slowly. To the bushes. Leave your horse. There is something out here." 

“Who are you, what're you talking about and why should I trust you?" Florin asked again. 

“There is something out here, my friend. I'm just a fellow traveler, and I've no wish to see another man butchered." A beat. “Now do as I say, or to hell with you." 

Florin considered it a moment… and then considered the surrounding dark. It seemed filled. With something hurtling. 

Something bounding like an eager jungle cat hunting sure prey. 

Florin quickly dismounted, grabbed his saddlebags and then ran to the voice as it called out once more. He scrambled in the bushes with a large dark gypsy man with long black hair, beneath swashbuckler scarf wrapped round his crown in a skullcap. He looked severe and he was desperately clutching something in his calloused hands. 

A rosary. A small wooden crucifix attached, dangled from the tear drop center. 

The gypsy looked at Florin with wide eyes filled to the whites with all of the night and its superstitious and terrible wonder. He brought a finger to his lips, in a gesture to bade the young man quiet. Then he pointed out into the night to tell him to watch. 

Florin did. 

The horse, reins tied to the branch of a nearby tree, was now more nervous and jumpy than ever. Florin had never before seen a trained and broken horse behave so strangely and so wild. 

And then it came out of the woods. Out of the night. Large and hulking. Eyes twinkling twin stars of blood red jewels in all of the surrounding oppressive dark. Set in a stitched up grotesque patchwork of a face that was both human and rat like, commingled and blasphemously mixed. A terrible mouth opened and moonlight glinted off the drooling tendril strands of bestial salivation and rabid animal slobber turning them into long translucent jewels of glass in the lunar glow. A pair of fangs, bone-white, gleamed amongst the rest of the mouth of rotten black. A miasma of decay and fecal stench, pungent and strong filled the cold space. Warming it with powerful foul and fetid odor, the heat of death. 

He growled. Seethed. It said a name then. One Florin swore he'd heard somewhere before. 

“Frankenstein…!”

The horse was in hysterics now. Its eyes rolling in wild terror as it kicked and reared and pranced in a frightful panic that only the animal can know. It hurt Florin's heart to see the beast as such.

What came next was much worse. 

One of the large powerful arms of reanimated muscle, rippling beneath pale blue corpse flesh, shot out and found the poor beast’s throat, ripping it out in a sudden blur of crimson and hide and tearing discolored claw. A heavy steaming gout of dark animal blood shot forth from the fresh open wound which also belched steam into the night. The large rotting patchwork nosferatu brought its face into the warm red dark cord of horse blood and began to catch it in its wide open mouth. Gulping. Lapping. Tonguing with wild abandon the red warm cord-stream. 

As the horse suddenly stilled, then wobbled, then fell against the tree to which it was tethered and began to sag down to the earth, the creation came in, bathing its horrid face in horrible animal scarlet baptism as its mouth closed the distance and met the fresh wound ripped from the large stout neck. 

Florin from the bushes, with his host of gypsy saviors, could hear deep heavy gulping – deep heavy pulls of drinking, and the crunch and relish of strenuous chewing. Raw meat being devoured as the throat worked heavily to pull in thick viscous liquid. His stomach lurched and he nearly vomited but he held it together. It was awful but he could not pull his eyes away from the scene. Neither could his fortunate band of gypsies host. They all watched. Spellbound in the most terrible way by that which is so arresting and magnetic because it is so appalling you cannot actually believe your very eyes. You cannot believe it is actually happening. 

The vulpine manmade nosferatu creation took its fill, then with great prodigious strength, it threw the dead weight of the horse over one mighty shoulder, and then bounded off into the night. Heavily breathing through gurgles and throaty laughter. 

Florin waited til he was sure the thing was gone, then he thanked the Lord aloud and crossed himself. 

The gypsies gave their own prayers of thanks in another language the rider didn’t understand. But he was sure he nonetheless knew and felt every word. 

Yes. Thank the Lord on High. God Help Us. 

Carefully and quietly they arose from their hiding place together. 

The man who’d saved him spoke first. 

“Now you know to be careful in the night, fellow traveler. But now you are without a horse. Come with us, on our wagon, we will give free ride to your village.”

Florin said kindly but firmly: “Thank you but you don’t understand, I’ve just come from there and I’ve been searching the past many nights, I must get back on my way… but I’ve no idea where to look…”

The rider fell despondent. The sight of the creation and its feasting on his ride still very vivid and fresh in his mind. And he’d been thus far so fruitless in his hunt. Aimless. Nowhere. He had no idea of where to go. 

“Come with us,” the man, seeing the young one’s crestfallen face said again, “we can give you horse and maybe direction.” A beat. He held out his hand, “We shall see.”

Florin looked up into the weathered gypsy face and took the traveler’s hand. 

And away they went. Back to the gypsy camp. Not far off. 

Once there Florin saw that the band of travelers were actually a family. A father, mother, three sons, four daughters, a babe, and an old woman.

Around a campfire, they all shared their tales. The gypsy family: their travels and adventures and the strange sights and beasts and otherworldly designs thereon. 

Florin told them of his village. The one that had lived and was now dying in the shadow of Castle Dracula. 

The gypsies all crossed themselves at the sound, the name of the place. 

Florin joined them. And followed suit. 

He told them he was sent out to find someone, a man that the township needed to deliver them from the evil that now beset upon them nightly and fed on them like cattle. 

“Who?” asked the old woman, the grandmother of the family band. She hadn’t spoken up til now, since the young rider’s arrival. 

“Professor Abraham Van Helsing.” Florin said. 

A murmur of excitement went all throughout the family then. 

Then the man, the father of the band turned to Florin with something like a smile on his weathered face and he said: –

“We know where you can find this man. We know where you can find this Van Helsing.”

…

Erin was proud of her friend, Florin, and she wished him Godspeed everyday in the many weeks that followed his departure. She prayed to God that he was not dead and that he'd surely found someone that could help them and deliver them from this dark period of slaughter. 

More had died since he had left. More children and more adults. Neither the elderly nor the lame nor nubile young were spared the possible cutthroat silence of the nightly butchery. And many more died slowly, as if by some disease of cruel design, loss of blood slowly drained and taken. Fed upon over time while some were given more immediate and ravenous animal treatment. 

No one knew who was next. The pattern was everywhere and animal and impossible for any of them to follow. Many had already lost heart and taken their own lives, or fled. 

Some said that Florin was long gone. Or dead. Not to be counted on in either case. 

But Erin held on and she kept praying. Even when her parents and her aunt disappeared one night. Even when her own little brother had taken with the blood-loss plague that doubtless emanated from Castle Dracula with merciless and heartless intent. The poor little one like so many others before had become bed ridden. Pale and listless, barely breathing up til the end. This morning. 

Only her most immediate neighbors had bothered coming over to help with the burial and the funerary rites. Nobody had seen the priest in many days. 

She'd wept so lost and broken then when the final shovelful of dirt had been thrown and the sparse few gathered had taken their leave. She was so alone now and she didn't know what to do anymore. Everything felt useless and hopeless, that they all just lived at the cruel whim and mercy of horror that they could not even see until it was at last felt, and then at last as final cruel torture you were allowed to gaze into its terrible face. As final reward and punishment altogether, rolled into one. 

Sheer torture. Sheer agony was all that poor Erin felt now. 

That was why she'd volunteered this night for sentry duty. None had spoken against it. They were all of them far too tired and broken of heart and spirit to care anymore. At the beginning it would've been unheard of, a young lady like herself, only nineteen years and unwed… but now it didn't matter. There weren't enough able bodied men left anymore anyways. 

So she'd been given lantern and pistol and a small cask of warm wine. To protect against the cold. 

And then she'd taken to her watch. The last one, relieving the midnight man at three after and taking the final post till dawn. Alone. In the dark. 

She tried so desperately not to weep. But she couldn't help herself. Alone out here in the cold all of the faces of all of the dead friends and children and poor old folk came back racing through her mind unbidden in a procession that she could not bear but couldn't run from either. 

Erin wept and prayed and begged God to help them, to bring him back. To please, have Florin successful and bringing back their deliverer, their savior! 

Please Lord! Please! 

Save Us! 

Someone else weeping, a child crying, off in the dark somewhere, brought young Erin out her thoughts and prayers. 

A little startled she tried to spy out, holding the lantern aloft out into the dark, and she called: –

“Hello? Is someone there?" 

No word … but more weeping. 

A child's. A little girl's … by the sound. 

Forgetting herself and suddenly terrified for the thought of a small child out here alone with so much evil about, Erin flew forward with lantern held ahead and the pistol of her charge o’the night cocked. 

It wasn't long before she found the small little girl. In a horrible filthy dress, as if the child had been lost for weeks in the woods in naught but her pajamas. 

The child was turned away and bent and crying in her hands. Sobbing. 

Erin felt terrible for the little one, she went to her without any further hesitation, calling to the girl:

“Are you alright!? Oh my God, how did you get out here? Where are your parents? What're you doing out here, little one?" 

The child did not free her face but continued to weep, trying to speak through her crown cries and her sodden little fingers. 

“M-my, my-ma-mama…" 

Erin set the pistol aside as she knelt to the child and gently put her hands on her shoulders. The poor thing…

“It's ok, I'll get you home. Who's your mother? What's your name, little one?" she asked softly. 

The little girl stopped crying abruptly. But still she kept her face buried in her hands. 

Yet her voice was much clearer now, when finally she said: – 

"My name is Carmilla, Erin of Thoten. Thank you for asking.”

Erin suddenly felt cold and faint and as if her heart and chest had suddenly filled with dropping weight. She wondered fleetingly for that split second if this was the prelude to death, yet another heart breaking. She understood and knew that something was terribly wrong right away. 

Carmilla had been dead and gone for months now. Way back at nearly the start of all this relentless terror. 

Carmilla whirled suddenly. In the moonlight dark her face was both brilliant and youthful and pugnacious dog-like and goblin. She smiled and bore animal fangs and hissed like a rodent that carried disease. 

Erin flung herself back. In her sudden sprawl she fumbled for the pistol but her hand in its panic had only succeeded in shoving it further away. Out of reach. 

Carmilla laughed and tittered. Rodent squeals and bat-like screeches commingled with a child's giggles. 

Her eyes were flickering. Pinkish red dots that shone at the centers. Vulpine face drawn as she brandished fangs and continued to emit her strange abominated titters. 

“You're so kind, Erin. You always were. And if you're still wondering, my mother is just right there…” 

She pointed one clawed little finger out into the further dark. Erin was helpless but to look. 

And she saw her emerge from the ebon pitch of night in which she lorded and held as her ultimate domain. Clad in phantom white gown that darkled and shifted and changed to royal crimson red that was heavy and wet in spots, changing and shifting back and again with every advancing ghostly step. Her face was also phantom pale, so much so that it shone in the postmidnight pitch black like an unholy beacon, but yet she was beautiful. And terrible. Luciferian and unearthly driven. Her dark hair, a curtain of night unto itself, flowing out like a royal cape, as if caught in some unseen and unfelt wind. 

She came forward. And then like her dress, her Luciferian face began to change and dance and shift. 

Animal - wolf - rat - feline - insect - toad - bat - unknown - and then a rotten visage that was corpselike with the decay of the grave and a bastard conglomerate amalgamation of all her dancing shifted faces…

… then back to the one of beauty as she came upon poor Erin, sprawled on the cobble stones in the dark and at her feet and speechless. 

At the feet of Countess Zaleska, lord and master of Castle Dracula. Lord of the lands now through her awesome power and bloodthirst that could never be quenched. 

She said something then, before she finished the child –

“I've heard you, Erin. I have heard you. Although God has not heard your prayers, I have heard every word, I've listened every time, I've watched and relished as you shed each and every single tear, til now. Now, dear child, I, and not God, I am here to answer your prayers!" 

Carmilla laughed shrill rodent squeals as Erin shrieked one last final bottled shriek and Countess Zaleska came in with her bright fangs barred and descended. 

Erin died shrieking as they tore her apart. Still hoping and believing that Florin might come back and save them, that he might come back right now and save her. 

Many, the few that were left, heard her screams and struggles and the heavy sounds of wet fabric tearing and bones splintering and breaking, snapping. Slurping…

… Deep soupy pulls of drinking and chewing and laughter around mouthfuls of raw fresh meat. Nearly all of them that were left heard what was happening. 

But none came out. 

None came out to do anything about it. 

So the Countess Zaleska and her little Carmilla enjoyed a feast of yet another poor peasant girl. 

As the tattered remnants of the small village just listened and bore it. All night. 

All night until the dawn. 

Some of them were at least grateful for the coming rain, they could hear its booming and thunder now. They would be grateful for the rainfall to come and wash what was left of the young girl away from the cobblestones that so many of them had once swept and cared for and silently cherished. 

No more. 

Now they were just happy for the rain. It would wash the Erin girl's blood away, her last spent and violent red. 

But … those few, … they weren't so happy nor gladdened by the sound that seemed to call the storm into waking being. In bastard duet with the thunderclaps, preceding and then rising in intensity with the mounting roar of the worsening sky …

It sounded like roaring. 

Like the roars of an animal unknown and thrilled with bloodlust for another hunt that was coming. 

TO BE CONTINUED…

Carmilla knew her parents were asleep. She knew that mama and papa were dreaming now, this late into the long night despite their shared anxiety as of late, she knew this because the voice inside her head told her so. And like everything the voice that filled her little mind said, it was so. The voice belonged to the magic woman of the night. She lived in a castle, a big one, not too far from Carmilla's little cottage amongst the sparse village. And she promised that if Carmilla was a good girl and did as she was told, then the magic woman would take Carmilla away from the mundane drudgery and the chores and the Sunday sermons…

She'd heard of magic men and women taking lucky little boys and girls away from their small little lives of hard work and cold food and cold comforts, leaky roofs and the beds of straw and biting bugs that sucked blood… they took them away to live extraordinary magical lives. In the stories. In the færytales. 

Like in a tall formidable sky mounted spire. Or by the roaring sea. 

Like in her dreams. All of its splendor. 

But now no longer. Carmilla was to be whisked away, if the magic woman of the night kept her promise. But she should. She said she would. Just as long as Carmilla came when she was called, like a good obedient little girl. And just as long as Carmilla promised not to tell anyone the magic woman's name. Or anything about their secret friendship. 

“Sorcery survives in the dark, little one." The magic woman had said, not long ago, their first midnight meeting, "magic needs to be sequestered and private, in order to do it's business properly. If too many people know about it or its inner workings, then it'll get spoiled. And ruined. Like a secret. And we don't want that, do we, little one?”

Carmilla did not. And so the secret of the dark woman of the magic and the midnight call became a secret. A secret friendship complete with unknown purpose. And a secret embrace… but Carmilla didn't quite understand all that. Only that it left her a little dizzy, faint – like a spell… and that it hurt. 

More in the immediate moment. And then much soreness and aching afterwards. 

But it was alright, the magic woman had assured her, had already addressed this issue the moment little Carmilla had brought it up. And it was really no problem at all. It made sense, Carmilla thought, when you really pondered it for a moment it was like what her secret magic friend had said: …

“... the pain is just the price of true magic, dear… all things of pleasure and pleasing have their price and all price is painful… don't worry, little princess… soon you will dwell within my castle.” 

And it was these words that the little Carmilla held on to. Spellbound. Entranced. The woman of the night called, and the little girl heard. Answered. And like the many nights in the weeks prior, like all the children prior… the little sow came when called. 

Carmilla snuck from her home by window, as before. She went into the woods. Where the song that filled her mind bade her go. And in the woods in crooked wolfen shape, the Countess was waiting. 

Jaws dripping. Salivating. Hungry. 

Her great power was so demanding, so draining … she felt nearly always hungry. She was discovering the appetite of a vampire lord, although inherited, was of such a voracious ravenous volume that it neared the edge of a kind of mania. Madness. For the bloodfeast. 

Part of her, the most animal demoniac component, wanted to just lay waste and ripping tearing siege to all of it. The whole thing. Every village and hut and dwelling place. Every farm and every home. She wanted to invade. Conquer. And feast. 

But alas, to be careless could invite ruin to rain down upon her. There were boundaries and even laws, ancient, that even as mighty as she must observe and begrudgingly respect. 

Their homes were like the churches. Sanctuaries. 

It was no matter. Her powers were sufficient to trick them, the sows. The bloodbag curs. She tricked them into either invitation … or better yet, she called them through the nocturnal mind of the nightsong, and hypnotically they came. 

Like good obedient little calves for the hour of the abattoir and the meat cleaver engagement. 

Zaleska smiled at the thought. Herself, the meat cleaver. The children and their stupid dirt farming parents, dull eyed beasts that lulled brainless bags and thoughtless minds, navigated aimlessly until the wonderful moment they met her. The living blade. Finally. Delivered. 

She was the living blade of power and hunger. Thirst. 

In bastard wolfen shape she howled to the mottled sky, the humming ozone trapped by the blanket of rolling thunderheads above, trapped also was the heat. 

The heat of the day, held captive, now the heat of the midnight. Warm. Animal. Sultry. 

She willed the girl to hurry. Hurry through the woods and follow my voice, it fills your heart and mind and soul, little one. Come to me and find me and I will guide you to the discovery of true wonder. Come and find me, Carmilla, and I will show you true magic in the dark. Because that is where true magic always lives. 

And the little one, her fears of the night and the forest, banished by focused will and thought, pressed on through the darkness of the midnight trees. 

Not all else moved. Everything in the forest seemed to be holding its breath. All that dwelled in the wild that night was afraid. Everything held still. Locked in a primal fear felt throughout all of the leaves and growth. 

Little Carmilla came to the clearing and the rocks where the wolfen woman dwelled. The rock jutted from the soil like a dagger in the back of the earth. It hung over a small pond of fetid stagnant water. But the filth of the grubby pondscum water was deceived by the sudden light of the moon. Suddenly bled in, a stab wound in the cloud coverage on high let the pale light bleed in and down onto the Earth, the water became aglow. The wolfen woman stood on hind legs in its rays and began to change shape. 

Carmilla could hardly believe her eyes. Her little heart warmed, delighted. Thrilled that not all of the magic of the world was made-up nonsense. Here it was. Alive and well and before her eyes. 

Zaleska saw all of this, saw the wonder on the child's face and in her wide believing face, and smiled. 

She too, was delighted. 

“Good evening, little one. And thank you so much for coming, I missed you so dearly, I couldn't begin to tell you. You absolutely could not fathom." 

Her smile stretched and grew teeth. Teeth that were sharp and darkled like jewels just below the eyes that also danced with shining moving light. 

Camrilla was so eager, so excited, she couldn't help herself. She came right out with it, “Will you take me away this time? Like you promised? Will you take me away from this place? I want to go live in a castle now." 

Zaleska laughed. Pleased. 

“So eager… so eager to leave… aren't we…?” 

"Yes,” said Carmilla, "I don't want to clean anymore, I want to live high in a tower, close to the clouds and heaven and the angels and God like the nobles. Like you do. And I want to be magic like you, can you teach me?”

Zaleska laughed again. Harder. 

"So impatient! And demanding too…” 

Carmilla whined, "you mean you won't?” 

The Countess finished off a bout of laughter before she finally said:

"Of course I will, of course… But we must remember our manners, mustn't we…? We must remember to ask correctly when we're requesting something, especially something so grand, and spectacular… Don't you think so, little one?" 

Carmilla, suddenly reinvigorated and enthusiastic again, began to vigorously nod her little head in compliance. Her words soon joined: “Yes! yes! yes! please! Please! Please, Countess Zaleska! please take me away and make me magic like you!" 

Zaleska's grin stretched further. Grew to rictus. Then became wolfen again as she stepped forward to the child. 

“Ok, child. Ok. Come here. Come closer…”  

…

The townsfolk were gathered in the church. Uneasy and tense. All present were tense and terse. All were grim. Another child had been snatched. 

Though not yet found, all gathered, her parents included, more than readily expected to find the bloodless bag of child corpse in due short time. Like the others. 

All the others. 

Word from other nearby villages was report that they too were missing children. 

All of them. 

The fear of what once was and was thought long gone, banished… had now come back for another turn at the breaking wheel. Their children, all of their young, cruelly chosen as the limb selected to be delivered the coming blow. The little ones were where the terror had chosen to be aimed and directed. 

And delivered. 

Delivered. Without mercy. Or compunction. 

Boys and girls were just taken, like that – with no notice. What was delivered back were lifeless broken dolls. 

Little corpses. Cold. And drained of blood. 

Some of them mutilated. Ripped apart. As if by a ravenous beast. 

The priest of the town led the proceedings. He introduced himself and was quiet. Then said, 

“Another child was snatched last night, Carmilla," he motioned to the parents, some looked, some just kept their downward glances. Many held intense eyes on the priest. 

A beat. The priest met their intensity through gaze and matched it. Eyes leveled, he scanned the crowd. 

Then went on, 

“We’ve seen this evil at work before. Not a mere man. But all the signs show, the bodies recovered all bare the signs." 

Whispers, then, amongst the gathered crowd. To themselves and with one another. 

Strigoi – Strigoica 

Vvurdalak

Nosferatu 

Were-beast

Wraith

Dæmon

Abhartach

Vampire.

The hungry undead.  All of them were different names for the same foul disease, in mocking bipedal human shape. 

The priest did not hush the commotion, he let it carry on and patter til it ceased. They needed to all be aware. 

A beat. 

The whispers died down to silence once more. 

The priest went on: “Then we are all one of the same mind." A beat, “Good." A beat, “then there may be deliverance yet…" 

The talk went on. Debate. 

Verdict was reached. 

Curfew. None out after dark save those assigned sentry on each respective night, they would rotate and nearly all able bodied men would have turn to stand watch nightly, the town. 

The bitter and heavy hearts concluded their meeting no less broken, but determined. They had some sort of plan now, they were all taking some form of action. 

Wolfsbane and garlic flowers would be strewn liberally all about the town and the houses and homes. Every farmstead. Every public place of gathering. 

That left only the surrounding wild woods. And the treacherous mountains themselves, accursed and lording over the dwarfed little village. 

Carmilla’s mama and papa dispersed with the others and departed for home. All were careful not to be caught out after dark. They feared the sunset. All of them. Especially the families that still held fast their children.

Held steadfast. And ever closer to worsening breaking hearts that threatened to shatter. Break completely. And then grow harsh and colder and bitter. Wounds that never heal. A town of parents disgraced, afraid. 

The priest prayed to the Lord of Mercy and divine intervention, please… for the town. Spare them. 

Spare them this wolfen hungry wraith. Whatever has come back to life in Castle Dracula, please let it leave us in peace. Let it find its hunting grounds elsewhere. 

Please God. Take this blight away that blasphemes You, by wearing the shape of Your Image! Cast it away…

Countess Zaleska watched this all from her tower and laughed.

…

Carmilla's father was dozing off, in the rocking chair of the main room by the front door. Beside the fireplace, when a sudden scream in the night brought him out of exhausted sleep. He flew to his feet, still dressed in his filthy day's wear, rifle in his hands he whirled and then covered the short distance to his own bedroom. 

The scream had belonged to his wife. He was sure of it. 

And his suspicion was confirmed when he burst into the room. His wife was sat up in bed, blankets pulled to her face in fright like a child wanting to hide. But that wasn't all…

Something was pixie perched in the open window. Crouched and bent and hunkered in bestial goblin shape. But it was a shape he thought he might nonetheless recognize. 

Then his eyes attuned to the dark and he lost his breath. The words escaped his lips, windless: –

“... Carmilla?" 

Tittery, cruel and saccharine childish girlish giggles came from the little silhouette of beastly shape in the window. A smile, white, gleamed and grew in the night. 

And the eyes. The eyes seemed to disappear then reappear like flashing jewels that sometimes shone an animal shade of scarlet/pink. 

"Yes, papa! Yes, it's me! Tell Mama to stop being silly.”

His wife shouted his name in bottled terror: “Cristian!" 

Carmilla in the dark, in the window, tittered more bright cruel child laughter. As if playing a game. 

“See, papa! She only uses your name in front of me when she's upset! She's so foolish, isn't she papa? She always was. You've always thought so." 

Cristian, father of the sweet little nine year old Carmilla, surprised himself with what he did next. He leveled his rifle at the waist, pointing it at the laughing shape in the midnight dark of the window. 

He growled: "Get the hell out of my home, whatever you are! You are not welcome here, demon! You are not welcome in this house!” 

A beat. 

And then the laughter of the thing grew. Sharper. More cruel and twisted and sadistic. 

Then the bastard child shape of the dark, perched, said sweetly, “But papa, mama's already invited me in…” 

Cristian looked to his wife, Consuela, with dread stealing over his darkening heart. 

She looked wide eyed and pleading, "I'm sorry! Please, I didn't know, I thought she was a dream, and I thought she was home, and she… she just… asked…” 

Cristian looked back to the shape in the window. 

Carmella began to crawl in. 

"You know, papa, you should be really proud. All of the other children before me weren't chosen, they were just meat. That's what she said, pa. ‘Just meat’. But not me. No. She chose me, special, papa. And now I am sired and I feel wonderful. More wonderful and powerful than ever. I can show you, daddy. I can show you and mama too.” 

She began to crawl towards them. Tittering and giggling, girlish little squeals. 

The rifle was leveled once more, pointed at the crawling shape. 

Carmilla just laughed, "Oh! That won't work, silly papa! You know it won't…” 

Grim hopeless dread, cold and heavy stole over his chest and guts, the vacant place where his heart should be. 

Consuela wished to flee but terror kept her bound to the bed. 

The thing crawled in further. 

"I do wish you'd get rid of these stinky flowers though, papa. They are revolting and cloying and I HATE THEM!” 

And with that and without any warning, she lunged with animal speed. Lunged and took her father Cristian to the ground. 

The rifle went off. The struggle was over quickly. 

Cristian lay still in a growing pool of warm dark. 

Consuela shrieked as the child shape tittered and then began to lap up the pool of her husband's blood. 

Like a dog. Like a wild mongrel beast. 

A wild animal that's gotten a taste for manflesh and red. 

It was with this last terrible sight that Consuela prayed for forgiveness from the Lord on high. Prayed aloud and to the heavens for mercy and that she was sorry for failing her duties as a wife and a mother. 

Carmilla laughed at her. And then lunged again. 

Telling her that God could not hear her. 

He was deaf to all of the screaming of the Earth. 

…

The mutilated bodies were found the next day. Midday, when the sun held high and center of the blue. He hadn't been seen and he hadn't come to the shop for his usual grain and feed. 

The ghastly scene was worse than any had ever beheld prior. None of them had ever seen such carnage. Such heartless wanton slaughter of two innocent people. A man and his humble wife. 

Parents. That'd just lost their child.  

…

Another town meeting was held. More drastic measures were decided upon. And taken. 

A horseman, their fastest, the swiftest rider in town was dispatched. With simple yet absolutely vital mission. He should come if the message was properly delivered and conveyed. 

Find him. Find the doctor who was also a hunter of sorts. A hunter of these strange and terrible things. He was said to be able to identify and destroy such beasts. It was said that he had already sent such felled creatures back to the abyssal chasm from whence they had came… 

The rider, Florin, was dispatched. And sent. 

Find him….find the one called Abraham Van Helsing. 

And God willing, bring him here so that he may deliver us!!

The assistant had been in town when young Florin had flown. His ear to the ground and the right subtle inquiries to the right fools told him the rest. 

All he needed to know. 

He returned to the castle in secret. When his master awoke, he told her of the plan of the townsfolk. 

And together they shared heartless wicked laughter, the fools! The fools! They had no idea! 

Professor Abraham Van Helsing was dead. Long dead. Food for the maggots and the worms in the womb of soil that was his grave. 

Zaleska could still recall visiting the site. And spitting on it. 

Carmella came awake then and she too joined in their laughter. She loved to be with them, the Countess and her loyal assistant, her new mother and father. 

They were such a wonderful and happy family. 

… 

Egnaw groaned. All of his misshapen form seemed to be nothing but pain and weight. He couldn't move. Stunned. Perhaps paralyzed. But none of this held candleflame to the predicament he now found himself in. 

The thing, the creation, was huge. Powerful. It held him in one massive clawed hand, attached to a powerful arm of stitched and patchwork muscle tissue and limb. The eyes were vulpine red and animal alive and wide and they seem to bore holes into him. 

The creation shrieked in his face, then brought him in as it lunged in with its wide open mouthed face. 

The fangs sank in and the thing began to suck. And drink. Deeply. 

Strange and unholy euphoria stole over the poor man servant slave then. Not the first in his bloodline to both serve… and then curse the name of Frankenstein! 

He was grogged and fogged of thought,. disoriented as if drugged. He couldn't tell where they were. Or how long it had been since the tower's collapse. 

Since the experiment.

An experiment that had been all too successful. And only to be sabotaged suddenly in the end. 

He cursed his master, Henry Frankenstein, looking at his bound and unconscious form, lying in the dirt. As he himself was held aloft by the throat. 

The creation, it's powerful stolen fangs of mad science and witch doctory, sank into his misshapen frame just below and underneath the armpit. 

He sucked. And sucked. Pulling more and more precious warm living scarlet from the ugly bloodbag. 

The creation had its fill. Then moved on, the bloodbags still bound and trussed. 

Still dragged through the dirt. Some of them semi-conscious and cursing, screaming. Threatening. Begging…

… pleading. Pleading for help. Pleading for mercy. 

Help us please… arose pitifully from the dirt. 

And was promptly ignored. By both God. 

And monster. 

The creation knew to sleep by day. Instinct and magic innate told him. 

And the mountains, those too were instinct. And magic. 

And they were still calling him. 

Something lived there, something that would have him. 

It called. 

Drawing ever nearer, he was just starting to be able to hear and discern the tidal wave tumult of the words to the mountains song. 

And dragging the bloodbags behind him like large satchels that carried precious cargo, the creation continued on towards them. Their outline and shape gaining more detail and growing more to staggering towers as he took each heavy animal step. 

The mountains called. And Egnaw wondered if his master, Frankenstein would ever awake. 

TO BE CONTINUED…

Carmilla knew her parents were asleep. She knew that mama and papa were dreaming now, this late into the long night despite their shared anxiety as of late, she knew this because the voice inside her head told her so. And like everything the voice that filled her little mind said, it was so. The voice belonged to the magic woman of the night. She lived in a castle, a big one, not too far from Carmilla's little cottage amongst the sparse village. And she promised that if Carmilla was a good girl and did as she was told, then the magic woman would take Carmilla away from the mundane drudgery and the chores and the Sunday sermons…

She'd heard of magic men and women taking lucky little boys and girls away from their small little lives of hard work and cold food and cold comforts, leaky roofs and the beds of straw and biting bugs that sucked blood… they took them away to live extraordinary magical lives. In the stories. In the færytales. 

Like in a tall formidable sky mounted spire. Or by the roaring sea. 

Like in her dreams. All of its splendor. 

But now no longer. Carmilla was to be whisked away, if the magic woman of the night kept her promise. But she should. She said she would. Just as long as Carmilla came when she was called, like a good obedient little girl. And just as long as Carmilla promised not to tell anyone the magic woman's name. Or anything about their secret friendship. 

“Sorcery survives in the dark, little one." The magic woman had said, not long ago, their first midnight meeting, "magic needs to be sequestered and private, in order to do it's business properly. If too many people know about it or its inner workings, then it'll get spoiled. And ruined. Like a secret. And we don't want that, do we, little one?”

Carmilla did not. And so the secret of the dark woman of the magic and the midnight call became a secret. A secret friendship complete with unknown purpose. And a secret embrace… but Carmilla didn't quite understand all that. Only that it left her a little dizzy, faint – like a spell… and that it hurt. 

More in the immediate moment. And then much soreness and aching afterwards. 

But it was alright, the magic woman had assured her, had already addressed this issue the moment little Carmilla had brought it up. And it was really no problem at all. It made sense, Carmilla thought, when you really pondered it for a moment it was like what her secret magic friend had said: …

“... the pain is just the price of true magic, dear… all things of pleasure and pleasing have their price and all price is painful… don't worry, little princess… soon you will dwell within my castle.” 

And it was these words that the little Carmilla held on to. Spellbound. Entranced. The woman of the night called, and the little girl heard. Answered. And like the many nights in the weeks prior, like all the children prior… the little sow came when called. 

Carmilla snuck from her home by window, as before. She went into the woods. Where the song that filled her mind bade her go. And in the woods in crooked wolfen shape, the Countess was waiting. 

Jaws dripping. Salivating. Hungry. 

Her great power was so demanding, so draining … she felt nearly always hungry. She was discovering the appetite of a vampire lord, although inherited, was of such a voracious ravenous volume that it neared the edge of a kind of mania. Madness. For the bloodfeast. 

Part of her, the most animal demoniac component, wanted to just lay waste and ripping tearing siege to all of it. The whole thing. Every village and hut and dwelling place. Every farm and every home. She wanted to invade. Conquer. And feast. 

But alas, to be careless could invite ruin to rain down upon her. There were boundaries and even laws, ancient, that even as mighty as she must observe and begrudgingly respect. 

Their homes were like the churches. Sanctuaries. 

It was no matter. Her powers were sufficient to trick them, the sows. The bloodbag curs. She tricked them into either invitation … or better yet, she called them through the nocturnal mind of the nightsong, and hypnotically they came. 

Like good obedient little calves for the hour of the abattoir and the meat cleaver engagement. 

Zaleska smiled at the thought. Herself, the meat cleaver. The children and their stupid dirt farming parents, dull eyed beasts that lulled brainless bags and thoughtless minds, navigated aimlessly until the wonderful moment they met her. The living blade. Finally. Delivered. 

She was the living blade of power and hunger. Thirst. 

In bastard wolfen shape she howled to the mottled sky, the humming ozone trapped by the blanket of rolling thunderheads above, trapped also was the heat. 

The heat of the day, held captive, now the heat of the midnight. Warm. Animal. Sultry. 

She willed the girl to hurry. Hurry through the woods and follow my voice, it fills your heart and mind and soul, little one. Come to me and find me and I will guide you to the discovery of true wonder. Come and find me, Carmilla, and I will show you true magic in the dark. Because that is where true magic always lives. 

And the little one, her fears of the night and the forest, banished by focused will and thought, pressed on through the darkness of the midnight trees. 

Not all else moved. Everything in the forest seemed to be holding its breath. All that dwelled in the wild that night was afraid. Everything held still. Locked in a primal fear felt throughout all of the leaves and growth. 

Little Carmilla came to the clearing and the rocks where the wolfen woman dwelled. The rock jutted from the soil like a dagger in the back of the earth. It hung over a small pond of fetid stagnant water. But the filth of the grubby pondscum water was deceived by the sudden light of the moon. Suddenly bled in, a stab wound in the cloud coverage on high let the pale light bleed in and down onto the Earth, the water became aglow. The wolfen woman stood on hind legs in its rays and began to change shape. 

Carmilla could hardly believe her eyes. Her little heart warmed, delighted. Thrilled that not all of the magic of the world was made-up nonsense. Here it was. Alive and well and before her eyes. 

Zaleska saw all of this, saw the wonder on the child's face and in her wide believing face, and smiled. 

She too, was delighted. 

“Good evening, little one. And thank you so much for coming, I missed you so dearly, I couldn't begin to tell you. You absolutely could not fathom." 

Her smile stretched and grew teeth. Teeth that were sharp and darkled like jewels just below the eyes that also danced with shining moving light. 

Camrilla was so eager, so excited, she couldn't help herself. She came right out with it, “Will you take me away this time? Like you promised? Will you take me away from this place? I want to go live in a castle now." 

Zaleska laughed. Pleased. 

“So eager… so eager to leave… aren't we…?” 

"Yes,” said Carmilla, "I don't want to clean anymore, I want to live high in a tower, close to the clouds and heaven and the angels and God like the nobles. Like you do. And I want to be magic like you, can you teach me?”

Zaleska laughed again. Harder. 

"So impatient! And demanding too…” 

Carmilla whined, "you mean you won't?” 

The Countess finished off a bout of laughter before she finally said:

"Of course I will, of course… But we must remember our manners, mustn't we…? We must remember to ask correctly when we're requesting something, especially something so grand, and spectacular… Don't you think so, little one?" 

Carmilla, suddenly reinvigorated and enthusiastic again, began to vigorously nod her little head in compliance. Her words soon joined: “Yes! yes! yes! please! Please! Please, Countess Zaleska! please take me away and make me magic like you!" 

Zaleska's grin stretched further. Grew to rictus. Then became wolfen again as she stepped forward to the child. 

“Ok, child. Ok. Come here. Come closer…”  

…

The townsfolk were gathered in the church. Uneasy and tense. All present were tense and terse. All were grim. Another child had been snatched. 

Though not yet found, all gathered, her parents included, more than readily expected to find the bloodless bag of child corpse in due short time. Like the others. 

All the others. 

Word from other nearby villages was report that they too were missing children. 

All of them. 

The fear of what once was and was thought long gone, banished… had now come back for another turn at the breaking wheel. Their children, all of their young, cruelly chosen as the limb selected to be delivered the coming blow. The little ones were where the terror had chosen to be aimed and directed. 

And delivered. 

Delivered. Without mercy. Or compunction. 

Boys and girls were just taken, like that – with no notice. What was delivered back were lifeless broken dolls. 

Little corpses. Cold. And drained of blood. 

Some of them mutilated. Ripped apart. As if by a ravenous beast. 

The priest of the town led the proceedings. He introduced himself and was quiet. Then said, 

“Another child was snatched last night, Carmilla," he motioned to the parents, some looked, some just kept their downward glances. Many held intense eyes on the priest. 

A beat. The priest met their intensity through gaze and matched it. Eyes leveled, he scanned the crowd. 

Then went on, 

“We’ve seen this evil at work before. Not a mere man. But all the signs show, the bodies recovered all bare the signs." 

Whispers, then, amongst the gathered crowd. To themselves and with one another. 

Strigoi – Strigoica 

Vvurdalak

Nosferatu 

Were-beast

Wraith

Dæmon

Abhartach

Vampire.

The hungry undead.  All of them were different names for the same foul disease, in mocking bipedal human shape. 

The priest did not hush the commotion, he let it carry on and patter til it ceased. They needed to all be aware. 

A beat. 

The whispers died down to silence once more. 

The priest went on: “Then we are all one of the same mind." A beat, “Good." A beat, “then there may be deliverance yet…" 

The talk went on. Debate. 

Verdict was reached. 

Curfew. None out after dark save those assigned sentry on each respective night, they would rotate and nearly all able bodied men would have turn to stand watch nightly, the town. 

The bitter and heavy hearts concluded their meeting no less broken, but determined. They had some sort of plan now, they were all taking some form of action. 

Wolfsbane and garlic flowers would be strewn liberally all about the town and the houses and homes. Every farmstead. Every public place of gathering. 

That left only the surrounding wild woods. And the treacherous mountains themselves, accursed and lording over the dwarfed little village. 

Carmilla’s mama and papa dispersed with the others and departed for home. All were careful not to be caught out after dark. They feared the sunset. All of them. Especially the families that still held fast their children.

Held steadfast. And ever closer to worsening breaking hearts that threatened to shatter. Break completely. And then grow harsh and colder and bitter. Wounds that never heal. A town of parents disgraced, afraid. 

The priest prayed to the Lord of Mercy and divine intervention, please… for the town. Spare them. 

Spare them this wolfen hungry wraith. Whatever has come back to life in Castle Dracula, please let it leave us in peace. Let it find its hunting grounds elsewhere. 

Please God. Take this blight away that blasphemes You, by wearing the shape of Your Image! Cast it away…

Countess Zaleska watched this all from her tower and laughed.

…

Carmilla's father was dozing off, in the rocking chair of the main room by the front door. Beside the fireplace, when a sudden scream in the night brought him out of exhausted sleep. He flew to his feet, still dressed in his filthy day's wear, rifle in his hands he whirled and then covered the short distance to his own bedroom. 

The scream had belonged to his wife. He was sure of it. 

And his suspicion was confirmed when he burst into the room. His wife was sat up in bed, blankets pulled to her face in fright like a child wanting to hide. But that wasn't all…

Something was pixie perched in the open window. Crouched and bent and hunkered in bestial goblin shape. But it was a shape he thought he might nonetheless recognize. 

Then his eyes attuned to the dark and he lost his breath. The words escaped his lips, windless: –

“... Carmilla?" 

Tittery, cruel and saccharine childish girlish giggles came from the little silhouette of beastly shape in the window. A smile, white, gleamed and grew in the night. 

And the eyes. The eyes seemed to disappear then reappear like flashing jewels that sometimes shone an animal shade of scarlet/pink. 

"Yes, papa! Yes, it's me! Tell Mama to stop being silly.”

His wife shouted his name in bottled terror: “Cristian!" 

Carmilla in the dark, in the window, tittered more bright cruel child laughter. As if playing a game. 

“See, papa! She only uses your name in front of me when she's upset! She's so foolish, isn't she papa? She always was. You've always thought so." 

Cristian, father of the sweet little nine year old Carmilla, surprised himself with what he did next. He leveled his rifle at the waist, pointing it at the laughing shape in the midnight dark of the window. 

He growled: "Get the hell out of my home, whatever you are! You are not welcome here, demon! You are not welcome in this house!” 

A beat. 

And then the laughter of the thing grew. Sharper. More cruel and twisted and sadistic. 

Then the bastard child shape of the dark, perched, said sweetly, “But papa, mama's already invited me in…” 

Cristian looked to his wife, Consuela, with dread stealing over his darkening heart. 

She looked wide eyed and pleading, "I'm sorry! Please, I didn't know, I thought she was a dream, and I thought she was home, and she… she just… asked…” 

Cristian looked back to the shape in the window. 

Carmella began to crawl in. 

"You know, papa, you should be really proud. All of the other children before me weren't chosen, they were just meat. That's what she said, pa. ‘Just meat’. But not me. No. She chose me, special, papa. And now I am sired and I feel wonderful. More wonderful and powerful than ever. I can show you, daddy. I can show you and mama too.” 

She began to crawl towards them. Tittering and giggling, girlish little squeals. 

The rifle was leveled once more, pointed at the crawling shape. 

Carmilla just laughed, "Oh! That won't work, silly papa! You know it won't…” 

Grim hopeless dread, cold and heavy stole over his chest and guts, the vacant place where his heart should be. 

Consuela wished to flee but terror kept her bound to the bed. 

The thing crawled in further. 

"I do wish you'd get rid of these stinky flowers though, papa. They are revolting and cloying and I HATE THEM!” 

And with that and without any warning, she lunged with animal speed. Lunged and took her father Cristian to the ground. 

The rifle went off. The struggle was over quickly. 

Cristian lay still in a growing pool of warm dark. 

Consuela shrieked as the child shape tittered and then began to lap up the pool of her husband's blood. 

Like a dog. Like a wild mongrel beast. 

A wild animal that's gotten a taste for manflesh and red. 

It was with this last terrible sight that Consuela prayed for forgiveness from the Lord on high. Prayed aloud and to the heavens for mercy and that she was sorry for failing her duties as a wife and a mother. 

Carmilla laughed at her. And then lunged again. 

Telling her that God could not hear her. 

He was deaf to all of the screaming of the Earth. 

…

The mutilated bodies were found the next day. Midday, when the sun held high and center of the blue. He hadn't been seen and he hadn't come to the shop for his usual grain and feed. 

The ghastly scene was worse than any had ever beheld prior. None of them had ever seen such carnage. Such heartless wanton slaughter of two innocent people. A man and his humble wife. 

Parents. That'd just lost their child.  

…

Another town meeting was held. More drastic measures were decided upon. And taken. 

A horseman, their fastest, the swiftest rider in town was dispatched. With simple yet absolutely vital mission. He should come if the message was properly delivered and conveyed. 

Find him. Find the doctor who was also a hunter of sorts. A hunter of these strange and terrible things. He was said to be able to identify and destroy such beasts. It was said that he had already sent such felled creatures back to the abyssal chasm from whence they had came… 

The rider, Florin, was dispatched. And sent. 

Find him….find the one called Abraham Van Helsing. 

And God willing, bring him here so that he may deliver us!!

The assistant had been in town when young Florin had flown. His ear to the ground and the right subtle inquiries to the right fools told him the rest. 

All he needed to know. 

He returned to the castle in secret. When his master awoke, he told her of the plan of the townsfolk. 

And together they shared heartless wicked laughter, the fools! The fools! They had no idea! 

Professor Abraham Van Helsing was dead. Long dead. Food for the maggots and the worms in the womb of soil that was his grave. 

Zaleska could still recall visiting the site. And spitting on it. 

Carmella came awake then and she too joined in their laughter. She loved to be with them, the Countess and her loyal assistant, her new mother and father. 

They were such a wonderful and happy family. 

… 

Egnaw groaned. All of his misshapen form seemed to be nothing but pain and weight. He couldn't move. Stunned. Perhaps paralyzed. But none of this held candleflame to the predicament he now found himself in. 

The thing, the creation, was huge. Powerful. It held him in one massive clawed hand, attached to a powerful arm of stitched and patchwork muscle tissue and limb. The eyes were vulpine red and animal alive and wide and they seem to bore holes into him. 

The creation shrieked in his face, then brought him in as it lunged in with its wide open mouthed face. 

The fangs sank in and the thing began to suck. And drink. Deeply. 

Strange and unholy euphoria stole over the poor man servant slave then. Not the first in his bloodline to both serve… and then curse the name of Frankenstein! 

He was grogged and fogged of thought,. disoriented as if drugged. He couldn't tell where they were. Or how long it had been since the tower's collapse. 

Since the experiment.

An experiment that had been all too successful. And only to be sabotaged suddenly in the end. 

He cursed his master, Henry Frankenstein, looking at his bound and unconscious form, lying in the dirt. As he himself was held aloft by the throat. 

The creation, it's powerful stolen fangs of mad science and witch doctory, sank into his misshapen frame just below and underneath the armpit. 

He sucked. And sucked. Pulling more and more precious warm living scarlet from the ugly bloodbag. 

The creation had its fill. Then moved on, the bloodbags still bound and trussed. 

Still dragged through the dirt. Some of them semi-conscious and cursing, screaming. Threatening. Begging…

… pleading. Pleading for help. Pleading for mercy. 

Help us please… arose pitifully from the dirt. 

And was promptly ignored. By both God. 

And monster. 

The creation knew to sleep by day. Instinct and magic innate told him. 

And the mountains, those too were instinct. And magic. 

And they were still calling him. 

Something lived there, something that would have him. 

It called. 

Drawing ever nearer, he was just starting to be able to hear and discern the tidal wave tumult of the words to the mountains song. 

And dragging the bloodbags behind him like large satchels that carried precious cargo, the creation continued on towards them. Their outline and shape gaining more detail and growing more to staggering towers as he took each heavy animal step. 

The mountains called. And Egnaw wondered if his master, Frankenstein would ever awake. 

TO BE CONTINUED…

Carmilla knew her parents were asleep. She knew that mama and papa were dreaming now, this late into the long night despite their shared anxiety as of late, she knew this because the voice inside her head told her so. And like everything the voice that filled her little mind said, it was so. The voice belonged to the magic woman of the night. She lived in a castle, a big one, not too far from Carmilla's little cottage amongst the sparse village. And she promised that if Carmilla was a good girl and did as she was told, then the magic woman would take Carmilla away from the mundane drudgery and the chores and the Sunday sermons…

She'd heard of magic men and women taking lucky little boys and girls away from their small little lives of hard work and cold food and cold comforts, leaky roofs and the beds of straw and biting bugs that sucked blood… they took them away to live extraordinary magical lives. In the stories. In the færytales. 

Like in a tall formidable sky mounted spire. Or by the roaring sea. 

Like in her dreams. All of its splendor. 

But now no longer. Carmilla was to be whisked away, if the magic woman of the night kept her promise. But she should. She said she would. Just as long as Carmilla came when she was called, like a good obedient little girl. And just as long as Carmilla promised not to tell anyone the magic woman's name. Or anything about their secret friendship. 

“Sorcery survives in the dark, little one." The magic woman had said, not long ago, their first midnight meeting, "magic needs to be sequestered and private, in order to do it's business properly. If too many people know about it or its inner workings, then it'll get spoiled. And ruined. Like a secret. And we don't want that, do we, little one?”

Carmilla did not. And so the dark woman of the magic and the midnight call became a secret. A secret friendship complete with unknown purpose. And a secret embrace… but Carmilla didn't quite understand all that. Only that it left her a little dizzy, faint – like a spell… and that it hurt. 

More in the immediate moment. And then much soreness and aching afterwards. 

But it was alright, the magic woman had assured her, had already addressed this issue the moment little Carmilla had brought it up. And it was really no problem at all. It made sense, Carmilla thought, when you really pondered it for a moment it was like what her secret magic friend had said: …

“... the pain is just the price of true magic, dear… all things of pleasure and pleasing have their price and all price is painful… don't worry, little princess… soon you will dwell within my castle.” 

And it was these words that the little Carmilla held on to. Spellbound. Entranced. The woman of the night called, and the little girl heard. Answered. And like the many nights in the weeks prior, like all the children prior… the little sow came when called. 

Carmilla snuck from her home by window, as before. She went into the woods. Where the song that filled her mind bade her go. And in the woods in crooked wolfen shape, the Countess was waiting. 

Jaws dripping. Salivating. Hungry. 

Her great power was so demanding, so draining … she felt nearly always hungry. She was discovering the appetite of a vampire lord, although inherited, was of such a voracious ravenous volume that it neared the edge of a kind of mania. Madness. For the bloodfeast. 

Part of her, the most animal demoniac component, wanted to just lay waste and ripping tearing siege to all of it. The whole thing. Every village and hut and dwelling place. Every farm and every home. She wanted to invade. Conquer. And feast. 

But alas, to be careless could invite ruin to rain down upon her. There were boundaries and even laws, ancient, that even as mighty as she must observe and begrudgingly respect. 

Their homes were like the churches. Sanctuaries. 

It was no matter. Her powers were sufficient to trick them, the sows. The bloodbag curs. She tricked them into either invitation … or better yet, she called them through the nocturnal mind of the nightsong, and hypnotically they came. 

Like good obedient little calves for the hour of the abattoir and the meat cleaver engagement. 

Zaleska smiled at the thought. Herself, the meat cleaver. The children and their stupid dirt farming parents, dull eyed beasts that lulled brainless bags and thoughtless minds, navigated aimlessly until the wonderful moment they met her. The living blade. Finally. Delivered. 

She was the living blade of power and hunger. Thirst. 

In bastard wolfen shape she howled to the mottled sky, the humming ozone trapped by the blanket of rolling thunderheads above, trapped also was the heat. 

The heat of the day, held captive, now the heat of the midnight. Warm. Animal. Sultry. 

She willed the girl to hurry. Hurry through the woods and follow my voice, it fills your heart and mind and soul, little one. Come to me and find me and I will guide you to the discovery of true wonder. Come and find me, Carmilla, and I will show you true magic in the dark. Because that is where true magic always lives. 

And the little one, her fears of the night and the forest, banished by focused will and thought, pressed on through the darkness of the midnight trees. 

Not all else moved. Everything in the forest seemed to be holding its breath. All that dwelled in the wild that night was afraid. Everything held still. Locked in a primal fear felt throughout all of the leaves and growth. 

Little Carmilla came to the clearing and the rocks where the wolfen woman dwelled. The rock jutted from the soil like a dagger in the back of the earth. It hung over a small pond of fetid stagnant water. But the filth of the grubby pondscum water was deceived by the sudden light of the moon. Suddenly bled in, a stab wound in the cloud coverage on high let the pale light bleed in and down onto the Earth, the water became aglow. The wolfen woman stood on hind legs in its rays and began to change shape. 

Carmilla could hardly believe her eyes. Her little heart warmed, delighted. Thrilled that not all of the magic of the world was made-up nonsense. Here it was. Alive and well and before her eyes. 

Zaleska saw all of this, saw the wonder on the child's face and in her wide believing face, and smiled. 

She too, was delighted. 

“Good evening, little one. And thank you so much for coming, I missed you so dearly, I couldn't begin to tell you. You absolutely could not fathom." 

Her smile stretched and grew teeth. Teeth that were sharp and darkled like jewels just below the eyes that also danced with shining moving light. 

Camrilla was so eager, so excited, she couldn't help herself. She came right out with it, “Will you take me away this time? Like you promised? Will you take me away from this place? I want to go live in a castle now." 

Zaleska laughed. Pleased. 

“So eager… so eager to leave… aren't we…?” 

"Yes,” said Carmilla, "I don't want to clean anymore, I want to live high in a tower, close to the clouds and heaven and the angels and God like the nobles. Like you do. And I want to be magic like you, can you teach me?”

Zaleska laughed again. Harder. 

"So impatient! And demanding too…” 

Carmilla whined, "you mean you won't?” 

The Countess finished off a bout of laughter before she finally said:

"Of course I will, of course… But we must remember our manners, mustn't we…? We must remember to ask correctly when we're requesting something, especially something so grand, and spectacular… Don't you think so, little one?" 

Carmilla, suddenly reinvigorated and enthusiastic again, began to vigorously nod her little head in compliance. Her words soon joined: “Yes! yes! yes! please! Please! Please, Countess Zaleska! please take me away and make me magic like you!" 

Zaleska's grin stretched further. Grew to rictus. Then became wolfen again as she stepped forward to the child. 

“Ok, child. Ok. Come here. Come closer…”  

…

The townsfolk were gathered in the church. Uneasy and tense. All present were tense and terse. All were grim. Another child had been snatched. 

Though not yet found, all gathered, her parents included, more than readily expected to find the bloodless bag of child corpse in due short time. Like the others. 

All the others. 

Word from other nearby villages was report that they too were missing children. 

All of them. 

The fear of what once was and was thought long gone, banished… had now come back for another turn at the breaking wheel. Their children, all of their young, cruelly chosen as the limb selected to be delivered the coming blow. The little ones were where the terror had chosen to be aimed and directed. 

And delivered. 

Delivered. Without mercy. Or compunction. 

Boys and girls were just taken, like that – with no notice. What was delivered back were lifeless broken dolls. 

Little corpses. Cold. And drained of blood. 

Some of them mutilated. Ripped apart. As if by a ravenous beast. 

The priest of the town led the proceedings. He introduced himself and was quiet. Then said, 

“Another child was snatched last night, Carmilla," he motioned to the parents, some looked, some just kept their downward glances. Many held intense eyes on the priest. 

A beat. The priest met their intensity through gaze and matched it. Eyes leveled, he scanned the crowd. 

Then went on, 

“We’ve seen this evil at work before. Not a mere man. But all the signs show, the bodies recovered all bare the signs." 

Whispers, then, amongst the gathered crowd. To themselves and with one another. 

Strigoi – Strigoica 

Vvurdalak

Nosferatu 

Were-beast

Wraith

Dæmon

Abhartach

Vampire.

The hungry undead.  All of them were different names for the same foul disease, in mocking bipedal human shape. 

The priest did not hush the commotion, he let it carry on and patter til it ceased. They needed to all be aware. 

A beat. 

The whispers died down to silence once more. 

The priest went on: “Then we are all one of the same mind." A beat, “Good." A beat, “then there may be deliverance yet…" 

The talk went on. Debate. 

Verdict was reached. 

Curfew. None out after dark save those assigned sentry on each respective night, they would rotate and nearly all able bodied men would have turn to stand watch nightly, the town. 

The bitter and heavy hearts concluded their meeting no less broken, but determined. They had some sort of plan now, they were all taking some form of action. 

Wolfsbane and garlic flowers would be strewn liberally all about the town and the houses and homes. Every farmstead. Every public place of gathering. 

That left only the surrounding wild woods. And the treacherous mountains themselves, accursed and lording over the dwarfed little village. 

Carmilla’s mama and papa dispersed with the others and departed for home. All were careful not to be caught out after dark. They feared the sunset. All of them. Especially the families that still held fast their children.

Held steadfast. And ever closer to worsening breaking hearts that threatened to shatter. Break completely. And then grow harsh and colder and bitter. Wounds that never heal. A town of parents disgraced, afraid. 

The priest prayed to the Lord of Mercy and divine intervention, please… for the town. Spare them. 

Spare them this wolfen hungry wraith. Whatever has come back to life in Castle Dracula, please let it leave us in peace. Let it find its hunting grounds elsewhere. 

Please God. Take this blight away that blasphemes You, by wearing the shape of Your Image! Cast it away…

Countess Zaleska watched this all from her tower and laughed.

…

Carmilla's father was dozing off, in the rocking chair of the main room by the front door. Beside the fireplace, when a sudden scream in the night brought him out of exhausted sleep. He flew to his feet, still dressed in his filthy day's wear, rifle in his hands he whirled and then covered the short distance to his own bedroom. 

The scream had belonged to his wife. He was sure of it. 

And his suspicion was confirmed when he burst into the room. His wife was sat up in bed, blankets pulled to her face in fright like a child wanting to hide. But that wasn't all…

Something was pixie perched in the open window. Crouched and bent and hunkered in bestial goblin shape. But it was a shape he thought he might nonetheless recognize. 

Then his eyes attuned to the dark and he lost his breath. The words escaped his lips, windless: –

“... Carmilla?" 

Tittery, cruel and saccharine childish girlish giggles came from the little silhouette of beastly shape in the window. A smile, white, gleamed and grew in the night. 

And the eyes. The eyes seemed to disappear then reappear like flashing jewels that sometimes shone an animal shade of scarlet/pink. 

"Yes, papa! Yes, it's me! Tell Mama to stop being silly.”

His wife shouted his name in bottled terror: “Cristian!" 

Carmilla in the dark, in the window, tittered more bright cruel child laughter. As if playing a game. 

“See, papa! She only uses your name in front of me when she's upset! She's so foolish, isn't she papa? She always was. You've always thought so." 

Cristian, father of the sweet little nine year old Carmilla, surprised himself with what he did next. He leveled his rifle at the waist, pointing it at the laughing shape in the midnight dark of the window. 

He growled: "Get the hell out of my home, whatever you are! You are not welcome here, demon! You are not welcome in this house!” 

A beat. 

And then the laughter of the thing grew. Sharper. More cruel and twisted and sadistic. 

Then the bastard child shape of the dark, perched, said sweetly, “But papa, mama's already invited me in…” 

Cristian looked to his wife, Consuela, with dread stealing over his darkening heart. 

She looked wide eyed and pleading, "I'm sorry! Please, I didn't know, I thought she was a dream, and I thought she was home, and she… she just… asked…” 

Cristian looked back to the shape in the window. 

Carmella began to crawl in. 

"You know, papa, you should be really proud. All of the other children before me weren't chosen, they were just meat. That's what she said, pa. ‘Just meat’. But not me. No. She chose me, special, papa. And now I am sired and I feel wonderful. More wonderful and powerful than ever. I can show you, daddy. I can show you and mama too.” 

She began to crawl towards them. Tittering and giggling, girlish little squeals. 

The rifle was leveled once more, pointed at the crawling shape. 

Carmilla just laughed, "Oh! That won't work, silly papa! You know it won't…” 

Grim hopeless dread, cold and heavy stole over his chest and guts, the vacant place where his heart should be. 

Consuela wished to flee but terror kept her bound to the bed. 

The thing crawled in further. 

"I do wish you'd get rid of these stinky flowers though, papa. They are revolting and cloying and I HATE THEM!” 

And with that and without any warning, she lunged with animal speed. Lunged and took her father Cristian to the ground. 

The rifle went off. The struggle was over quickly. 

Cristian lay still in a growing pool of warm dark. 

Consuela shrieked as the child shape tittered and then began to lap up the pool of her husband's blood. 

Like a dog. Like a wild mongrel beast. 

A wild animal that's gotten a taste for manflesh and red. 

It was with this last terrible sight that Consuela prayed for forgiveness from the Lord on high. Prayed aloud and to the heavens for mercy and that she was sorry for failing her duties as a wife and a mother. 

Carmilla laughed at her. And then lunged again. 

Telling her that God could not hear her. 

He was deaf to all of the screaming of the Earth. 

…

The mutilated bodies were found the next day. Midday, when the sun held high and center of the blue. He hadn't been seen and he hadn't come to the shop for his usual grain and feed. 

The ghastly scene was worse than any had ever beheld prior. None of them had ever seen such carnage. Such heartless wanton slaughter of two innocent people. A man and his humble wife. 

Parents. That'd just lost their child.  

…

Another town meeting was held. More drastic measures were decided upon. And taken. 

A horseman, their fastest, the swiftest rider in town was dispatched. With simple yet absolutely vital mission. He should come if the message was properly delivered and conveyed. 

Find him. Find the doctor who was also a hunter of sorts. A hunter of these strange and terrible things. He was said to be able to identify and destroy such beasts. It was said that he had already sent such felled creatures back to the abyssal chasm from whence they had came… 

The rider, Florin, was dispatched. And sent. 

Find him….find the one called Abraham Van Helsing. 

And God willing, bring him here so that he may deliver us!!

The assistant had been in town when young Florin had flown. His ear to the ground and the right subtle inquiries to the right fools told him the rest. 

All he needed to know. 

He returned to the castle in secret. When his master awoke, he told her of the plan of the townsfolk. 

And together they shared heartless wicked laughter, the fools! The fools! They had no idea! 

Professor Abraham Van Helsing was dead. Long dead. Food for the maggots and the worms in the womb of soil that was his grave. 

Zaleska could still recall visiting the site. And spitting on it. 

Carmella came awake then and she too joined in their laughter. She loved to be with them, the Countess and her loyal assistant, her new mother and father. 

They were such a wonderful and happy family. 

… 

Egnaw groaned. All of his misshapen form seemed to be nothing but pain and weight. He couldn't move. Stunned. Perhaps paralyzed. But none of this held candleflame to the predicament he now found himself in. 

The thing, the creation, was huge. Powerful. It held him in one massive clawed hand, attached to a powerful arm of stitched and patchwork muscle tissue and limb. The eyes were vulpine red and animal alive and wide and they seem to bore holes into him. 

The creation shrieked in his face, then brought him in as it lunged in with its wide open mouthed face. 

The fangs sank in and the thing began to suck. And drink. Deeply. 

Strange and unholy euphoria stole over the poor man servant slave then. Not the first in his bloodline to both serve… and then curse the name of Frankenstein! 

He was grogged and fogged of thought,. disoriented as if drugged. He couldn't tell where they were. Or how long it had been since the tower's collapse. 

Since the experiment.

An experiment that had been all too successful. And only to be sabotaged suddenly in the end. 

He cursed his master, Henry Frankenstein, looking at his bound and unconscious form, lying in the dirt. As he himself was held aloft by the throat. 

The creation, it's powerful stolen fangs of mad science and witch doctory, sank into his misshapen frame just below and underneath the armpit. 

He sucked. And sucked. Pulling more and more precious warm living scarlet from the ugly bloodbag. 

The creation had its fill. Then moved on, the bloodbags still bound and trussed. 

Still dragged through the dirt. Some of them semi-conscious and cursing, screaming. Threatening. Begging…

… pleading. Pleading for help. Pleading for mercy. 

Help us please… arose pitifully from the dirt. 

And was promptly ignored. By both God. 

And monster. 

The creation knew to sleep by day. Instinct and magic innate told him. 

And the mountains, those too were instinct. And magic. 

And they were still calling him. 

Something lived there, something that would have him. 

It called. 

Drawing ever nearer, he was just starting to be able to hear and discern the tidal wave tumult of the words to the mountains song. 

And dragging the bloodbags behind him like large satchels that carried precious cargo, the creation continued on towards them. Their outline and shape gaining more detail and growing more to staggering towers as he took each heavy animal step. 

The mountains called. And Egnaw wondered if his master, Frankenstein would ever awake. 

TO BE CONTINUED…

Carmilla knew her parents were asleep. She knew that mama and papa were dreaming now, this late into the long night despite their shared anxiety as of late, she knew this because the voice inside her head told her so. And like everything the voice that filled her little mind said, it was so. The voice belonged to the magic woman of the night. She lived in a castle, a big one, not too far from Carmilla's little cottage amongst the sparse village. And she promised that if Carmilla was a good girl and did as she was told, then the magic woman would take Carmilla away from the mundane drudgery and the chores and the Sunday sermons…

She'd heard of magic men and women taking lucky little boys and girls away from their small little lives of hard work and cold food and cold comforts, leaky roofs and the beds of straw and biting bugs that sucked blood… they took them away to live extraordinary magical lives. In the stories. In the færytales. 

Like in a tall formidable sky mounted spire. Or by the roaring sea. 

Like in her dreams. All of its splendor. 

But now no longer. Carmilla was to be whisked away, if the magic woman of the night kept her promise. But she should. She said she would. Just as long as Carmilla came when she was called, like a good obedient little girl. And just as long as Carmilla promised not to tell anyone the magic woman's name. Or anything about their secret friendship. 

“Sorcery survives in the dark, little one." The magic woman had said, not long ago, their first midnight meeting, "magic needs to be sequestered and private, in order to do it's business properly. If too many people know about it or its inner workings, then it'll get spoiled. And ruined. Like a secret. And we don't want that, do we, little one?”

Carmilla did not. And so the secret of the dark woman of the magic and the midnight call became a secret. A secret friendship complete with unknown purpose. And a secret embrace… but Carmilla didn't quite understand all that. Only that it left her a little dizzy, faint – like a spell… and that it hurt. 

More in the immediate moment. And then much soreness and aching afterwards. 

But it was alright, the magic woman had assured her, had already addressed this issue the moment little Carmilla had brought it up. And it was really no problem at all. It made sense, Carmilla thought, when you really pondered it for a moment it was like what her secret magic friend had said: …

“... the pain is just the price of true magic, dear… all things of pleasure and pleasing have their price and all price is painful… don't worry, little princess… soon you will dwell within my castle.” 

And it was these words that the little Carmilla held on to. Spellbound. Entranced. The woman of the night called, and the little girl heard. Answered. And like the many nights in the weeks prior, like all the children prior… the little sow came when called. 

Carmilla snuck from her home by window, as before. She went into the woods. Where the song that filled her mind bade her go. And in the woods in crooked wolfen shape, the Countess was waiting. 

Jaws dripping. Salivating. Hungry. 

Her great power was so demanding, so draining … she felt nearly always hungry. She was discovering the appetite of a vampire lord, although inherited, was of such a voracious ravenous volume that it neared the edge of a kind of mania. Madness. For the bloodfeast. 

Part of her, the most animal demoniac component, wanted to just lay waste and ripping tearing siege to all of it. The whole thing. Every village and hut and dwelling place. Every farm and every home. She wanted to invade. Conquer. And feast. 

But alas, to be careless could invite ruin to rain down upon her. There were boundaries and even laws, ancient, that even as mighty as she must observe and begrudgingly respect. 

Their homes were like the churches. Sanctuaries. 

It was no matter. Her powers were sufficient to trick them, the sows. The bloodbag curs. She tricked them into either invitation … or better yet, she called them through the nocturnal mind of the nightsong, and hypnotically they came. 

Like good obedient little calves for the hour of the abattoir and the meat cleaver engagement. 

Zaleska smiled at the thought. Herself, the meat cleaver. The children and their stupid dirt farming parents, dull eyed beasts that lulled brainless bags and thoughtless minds, navigated aimlessly until the wonderful moment they met her. The living blade. Finally. Delivered. 

She was the living blade of power and hunger. Thirst. 

In bastard wolfen shape she howled to the mottled sky, the humming ozone trapped by the blanket of rolling thunderheads above, trapped also was the heat. 

The heat of the day, held captive, now the heat of the midnight. Warm. Animal. Sultry. 

She willed the girl to hurry. Hurry through the woods and follow my voice, it fills your heart and mind and soul, little one. Come to me and find me and I will guide you to the discovery of true wonder. Come and find me, Carmilla, and I will show you true magic in the dark. Because that is where true magic always lives. 

And the little one, her fears of the night and the forest, banished by focused will and thought, pressed on through the darkness of the midnight trees. 

Not all else moved. Everything in the forest seemed to be holding its breath. All that dwelled in the wild that night was afraid. Everything held still. Locked in a primal fear felt throughout all of the leaves and growth. 

Little Carmilla came to the clearing and the rocks where the wolfen woman dwelled. The rock jutted from the soil like a dagger in the back of the earth. It hung over a small pond of fetid stagnant water. But the filth of the grubby pondscum water was deceived by the sudden light of the moon. Suddenly bled in, a stab wound in the cloud coverage on high let the pale light bleed in and down onto the Earth, the water became aglow. The wolfen woman stood on hind legs in its rays and began to change shape. 

Carmilla could hardly believe her eyes. Her little heart warmed, delighted. Thrilled that not all of the magic of the world was made-up nonsense. Here it was. Alive and well and before her eyes. 

Zaleska saw all of this, saw the wonder on the child's face and in her wide believing face, and smiled. 

She too, was delighted. 

“Good evening, little one. And thank you so much for coming, I missed you so dearly, I couldn't begin to tell you. You absolutely could not fathom." 

Her smile stretched and grew teeth. Teeth that were sharp and darkled like jewels just below the eyes that also danced with shining moving light. 

Camrilla was so eager, so excited, she couldn't help herself. She came right out with it, “Will you take me away this time? Like you promised? Will you take me away from this place? I want to go live in a castle now." 

Zaleska laughed. Pleased. 

“So eager… so eager to leave… aren't we…?” 

"Yes,” said Carmilla, "I don't want to clean anymore, I want to live high in a tower, close to the clouds and heaven and the angels and God like the nobles. Like you do. And I want to be magic like you, can you teach me?”

Zaleska laughed again. Harder. 

"So impatient! And demanding too…” 

Carmilla whined, "you mean you won't?” 

The Countess finished off a bout of laughter before she finally said:

"Of course I will, of course… But we must remember our manners, mustn't we…? We must remember to ask correctly when we're requesting something, especially something so grand, and spectacular… Don't you think so, little one?" 

Carmilla, suddenly reinvigorated and enthusiastic again, began to vigorously nod her little head in compliance. Her words soon joined: “Yes! yes! yes! please! Please! Please, Countess Zaleska! please take me away and make me magic like you!" 

Zaleska's grin stretched further. Grew to rictus. Then became wolfen again as she stepped forward to the child. 

“Ok, child. Ok. Come here. Come closer…”  

…

The townsfolk were gathered in the church. Uneasy and tense. All present were tense and terse. All were grim. Another child had been snatched. 

Though not yet found, all gathered, her parents included, more than readily expected to find the bloodless bag of child corpse in due short time. Like the others. 

All the others. 

Word from other nearby villages was report that they too were missing children. 

All of them. 

The fear of what once was and was thought long gone, banished… had now come back for another turn at the breaking wheel. Their children, all of their young, cruelly chosen as the limb selected to be delivered the coming blow. The little ones were where the terror had chosen to be aimed and directed. 

And delivered. 

Delivered. Without mercy. Or compunction. 

Boys and girls were just taken, like that – with no notice. What was delivered back were lifeless broken dolls. 

Little corpses. Cold. And drained of blood. 

Some of them mutilated. Ripped apart. As if by a ravenous beast. 

The priest of the town led the proceedings. He introduced himself and was quiet. Then said, 

“Another child was snatched last night, Carmilla," he motioned to the parents, some looked, some just kept their downward glances. Many held intense eyes on the priest. 

A beat. The priest met their intensity through gaze and matched it. Eyes leveled, he scanned the crowd. 

Then went on, 

“We’ve seen this evil at work before. Not a mere man. But all the signs show, the bodies recovered all bare the signs." 

Whispers, then, amongst the gathered crowd. To themselves and with one another. 

Strigoi – Strigoica 

Vvurdalak

Nosferatu 

Were-beast

Wraith

Dæmon

Abhartach

Vampire.

The hungry undead.  All of them were different names for the same foul disease, in mocking bipedal human shape. 

The priest did not hush the commotion, he let it carry on and patter til it ceased. They needed to all be aware. 

A beat. 

The whispers died down to silence once more. 

The priest went on: “Then we are all one of the same mind." A beat, “Good." A beat, “then there may be deliverance yet…" 

The talk went on. Debate. 

Verdict was reached. 

Curfew. None out after dark save those assigned sentry on each respective night, they would rotate and nearly all able bodied men would have turn to stand watch nightly, the town. 

The bitter and heavy hearts concluded their meeting no less broken, but determined. They had some sort of plan now, they were all taking some form of action. 

Wolfsbane and garlic flowers would be strewn liberally all about the town and the houses and homes. Every farmstead. Every public place of gathering. 

That left only the surrounding wild woods. And the treacherous mountains themselves, accursed and lording over the dwarfed little village. 

Carmilla’s mama and papa dispersed with the others and departed for home. All were careful not to be caught out after dark. They feared the sunset. All of them. Especially the families that still held fast their children.

Held steadfast. And ever closer to worsening breaking hearts that threatened to shatter. Break completely. And then grow harsh and colder and bitter. Wounds that never heal. A town of parents disgraced, afraid. 

The priest prayed to the Lord of Mercy and divine intervention, please… for the town. Spare them. 

Spare them this wolfen hungry wraith. Whatever has come back to life in Castle Dracula, please let it leave us in peace. Let it find its hunting grounds elsewhere. 

Please God. Take this blight away that blasphemes You, by wearing the shape of Your Image! Cast it away…

Countess Zaleska watched this all from her tower and laughed.

…

Carmilla's father was dozing off, in the rocking chair of the main room by the front door. Beside the fireplace, when a sudden scream in the night brought him out of exhausted sleep. He flew to his feet, still dressed in his filthy day's wear, rifle in his hands he whirled and then covered the short distance to his own bedroom. 

The scream had belonged to his wife. He was sure of it. 

And his suspicion was confirmed when he burst into the room. His wife was sat up in bed, blankets pulled to her face in fright like a child wanting to hide. But that wasn't all…

Something was pixie perched in the open window. Crouched and bent and hunkered in bestial goblin shape. But it was a shape he thought he might nonetheless recognize. 

Then his eyes attuned to the dark and he lost his breath. The words escaped his lips, windless: –

“... Carmilla?" 

Tittery, cruel and saccharine childish girlish giggles came from the little silhouette of beastly shape in the window. A smile, white, gleamed and grew in the night. 

And the eyes. The eyes seemed to disappear then reappear like flashing jewels that sometimes shone an animal shade of scarlet/pink. 

"Yes, papa! Yes, it's me! Tell Mama to stop being silly.”

His wife shouted his name in bottled terror: “Cristian!" 

Carmilla in the dark, in the window, tittered more bright cruel child laughter. As if playing a game. 

“See, papa! She only uses your name in front of me when she's upset! She's so foolish, isn't she papa? She always was. You've always thought so." 

Cristian, father of the sweet little nine year old Carmilla, surprised himself with what he did next. He leveled his rifle at the waist, pointing it at the laughing shape in the midnight dark of the window. 

He growled: "Get the hell out of my home, whatever you are! You are not welcome here, demon! You are not welcome in this house!” 

A beat. 

And then the laughter of the thing grew. Sharper. More cruel and twisted and sadistic. 

Then the bastard child shape of the dark, perched, said sweetly, “But papa, mama's already invited me in…” 

Cristian looked to his wife, Consuela, with dread stealing over his darkening heart. 

She looked wide eyed and pleading, "I'm sorry! Please, I didn't know, I thought she was a dream, and I thought she was home, and she… she just… asked…” 

Cristian looked back to the shape in the window. 

Carmella began to crawl in. 

"You know, papa, you should be really proud. All of the other children before me weren't chosen, they were just meat. That's what she said, pa. ‘Just meat’. But not me. No. She chose me, special, papa. And now I am sired and I feel wonderful. More wonderful and powerful than ever. I can show you, daddy. I can show you and mama too.” 

She began to crawl towards them. Tittering and giggling, girlish little squeals. 

The rifle was leveled once more, pointed at the crawling shape. 

Carmilla just laughed, "Oh! That won't work, silly papa! You know it won't…” 

Grim hopeless dread, cold and heavy stole over his chest and guts, the vacant place where his heart should be. 

Consuela wished to flee but terror kept her bound to the bed. 

The thing crawled in further. 

"I do wish you'd get rid of these stinky flowers though, papa. They are revolting and cloying and I HATE THEM!” 

And with that and without any warning, she lunged with animal speed. Lunged and took her father Cristian to the ground. 

The rifle went off. The struggle was over quickly. 

Cristian lay still in a growing pool of warm dark. 

Consuela shrieked as the child shape tittered and then began to lap up the pool of her husband's blood. 

Like a dog. Like a wild mongrel beast. 

A wild animal that's gotten a taste for manflesh and red. 

It was with this last terrible sight that Consuela prayed for forgiveness from the Lord on high. Prayed aloud and to the heavens for mercy and that she was sorry for failing her duties as a wife and a mother. 

Carmilla laughed at her. And then lunged again. 

Telling her that God could not hear her. 

He was deaf to all of the screaming of the Earth. 

…

The mutilated bodies were found the next day. Midday, when the sun held high and center of the blue. He hadn't been seen and he hadn't come to the shop for his usual grain and feed. 

The ghastly scene was worse than any had ever beheld prior. None of them had ever seen such carnage. Such heartless wanton slaughter of two innocent people. A man and his humble wife. 

Parents. That'd just lost their child.  

…

Another town meeting was held. More drastic measures were decided upon. And taken. 

A horseman, their fastest, the swiftest rider in town was dispatched. With simple yet absolutely vital mission. He should come if the message was properly delivered and conveyed. 

Find him. Find the doctor who was also a hunter of sorts. A hunter of these strange and terrible things. He was said to be able to identify and destroy such beasts. It was said that he had already sent such felled creatures back to the abyssal chasm from whence they had came… 

The rider, Florin, was dispatched. And sent. 

Find him….find the one called Abraham Van Helsing. 

And God willing, bring him here so that he may deliver us!!

The assistant had been in town when young Florin had flown. His ear to the ground and the right subtle inquiries to the right fools told him the rest. 

All he needed to know. 

He returned to the castle in secret. When his master awoke, he told her of the plan of the townsfolk. 

And together they shared heartless wicked laughter, the fools! The fools! They had no idea! 

Professor Abraham Van Helsing was dead. Long dead. Food for the maggots and the worms in the womb of soil that was his grave. 

Zaleska could still recall visiting the site. And spitting on it. 

Carmella came awake then and she too joined in their laughter. She loved to be with them, the Countess and her loyal assistant, her new mother and father. 

They were such a wonderful and happy family. 

… 

Egnaw groaned. All of his misshapen form seemed to be nothing but pain and weight. He couldn't move. Stunned. Perhaps paralyzed. But none of this held candleflame to the predicament he now found himself in. 

The thing, the creation, was huge. Powerful. It held him in one massive clawed hand, attached to a powerful arm of stitched and patchwork muscle tissue and limb. The eyes were vulpine red and animal alive and wide and they seem to bore holes into him. 

The creation shrieked in his face, then brought him in as it lunged in with its wide open mouthed face. 

The fangs sank in and the thing began to suck. And drink. Deeply. 

Strange and unholy euphoria stole over the poor man servant slave then. Not the first in his bloodline to both serve… and then curse the name of Frankenstein! 

He was grogged and fogged of thought,. disoriented as if drugged. He couldn't tell where they were. Or how long it had been since the tower's collapse. 

Since the experiment.

An experiment that had been all too successful. And only to be sabotaged suddenly in the end. 

He cursed his master, Henry Frankenstein, looking at his bound and unconscious form, lying in the dirt. As he himself was held aloft by the throat. 

The creation, it's powerful stolen fangs of mad science and witch doctory, sank into his misshapen frame just below and underneath the armpit. 

He sucked. And sucked. Pulling more and more precious warm living scarlet from the ugly bloodbag. 

The creation had its fill. Then moved on, the bloodbags still bound and trussed. 

Still dragged through the dirt. Some of them semi-conscious and cursing, screaming. Threatening. Begging…

… pleading. Pleading for help. Pleading for mercy. 

Help us please… arose pitifully from the dirt. 

And was promptly ignored. By both God. 

And monster. 

The creation knew to sleep by day. Instinct and magic innate told him. 

And the mountains, those too were instinct. And magic. 

And they were still calling him. 

Something lived there, something that would have him. 

It called. 

Drawing ever nearer, he was just starting to be able to hear and discern the tidal wave tumult of the words to the mountains song. 

And dragging the bloodbags behind him like large satchels that carried precious cargo, the creation continued on towards them. Their outline and shape gaining more detail and growing more to staggering towers as he took each heavy animal step. 

The mountains called. And Egnaw wondered if his master, Frankenstein would ever awake. 

TO BE CONTINUED…

Carmilla knew her parents were asleep. She knew that mama and papa were dreaming now, this late into the long night despite their shared anxiety as of late, she knew this because the voice inside her head told her so. And like everything the voice that filled her little mind said, it was so. The voice belonged to the magic woman of the night. She lived in a castle, a big one, not too far from Carmilla's little cottage amongst the sparse village. And she promised that if Carmilla was a good girl and did as she was told, then the magic woman would take Carmilla away from the mundane drudgery and the chores and the Sunday sermons…

She'd heard of magic men and women taking lucky little boys and girls away from their small little lives of hard work and cold food and cold comforts, leaky roofs and the beds of straw and biting bugs that sucked blood… they took them away to live extraordinary magical lives. In the stories. In the færytales. 

Like in a tall formidable sky mounted spire. Or by the roaring sea. 

Like in her dreams. All of its splendor. 

But now no longer. Carmilla was to be whisked away, if the magic woman of the night kept her promise. But she should. She said she would. Just as long as Carmilla came when she was called, like a good obedient little girl. And just as long as Carmilla promised not to tell anyone the magic woman's name. Or anything about their secret friendship. 

“Sorcery survives in the dark, little one." The magic woman had said, not long ago, their first midnight meeting, "magic needs to be sequestered and private, in order to do it's business properly. If too many people know about it or its inner workings, then it'll get spoiled. And ruined. Like a secret. And we don't want that, do we, little one?”

Carmilla did not. And so the secret of the dark woman of the magic and the midnight call became a secret. A secret friendship complete with unknown purpose. And a secret embrace… but Carmilla didn't quite understand all that. Only that it left her a little dizzy, faint – like a spell… and that it hurt. 

More in the immediate moment. And then much soreness and aching afterwards. 

But it was alright, the magic woman had assured her, had already addressed this issue the moment little Carmilla had brought it up. And it was really no problem at all. It made sense, Carmilla thought, when you really pondered it for a moment it was like what her secret magic friend had said: …

“... the pain is just the price of true magic, dear… all things of pleasure and pleasing have their price and all price is painful… don't worry, little princess… soon you will dwell within my castle.” 

And it was these words that the little Carmilla held on to. Spellbound. Entranced. The woman of the night called, and the little girl heard. Answered. And like the many nights in the weeks prior, like all the children prior… the little sow came when called. 

Carmilla snuck from her home by window, as before. She went into the woods. Where the song that filled her mind bade her go. And in the woods in crooked wolfen shape, the Countess was waiting. 

Jaws dripping. Salivating. Hungry. 

Her great power was so demanding, so draining … she felt nearly always hungry. She was discovering the appetite of a vampire lord, although inherited, was of such a voracious ravenous volume that it neared the edge of a kind of mania. Madness. For the bloodfeast. 

Part of her, the most animal demoniac component, wanted to just lay waste and ripping tearing siege to all of it. The whole thing. Every village and hut and dwelling place. Every farm and every home. She wanted to invade. Conquer. And feast. 

But alas, to be careless could invite ruin to rain down upon her. There were boundaries and even laws, ancient, that even as mighty as she must observe and begrudgingly respect. 

Their homes were like the churches. Sanctuaries. 

It was no matter. Her powers were sufficient to trick them, the sows. The bloodbag curs. She tricked them into either invitation … or better yet, she called them through the nocturnal mind of the nightsong, and hypnotically they came. 

Like good obedient little calves for the hour of the abattoir and the meat cleaver engagement. 

Zaleska smiled at the thought. Herself, the meat cleaver. The children and their stupid dirt farming parents, dull eyed beasts that lulled brainless bags and thoughtless minds, navigated aimlessly until the wonderful moment they met her. The living blade. Finally. Delivered. 

She was the living blade of power and hunger. Thirst. 

In bastard wolfen shape she howled to the mottled sky, the humming ozone trapped by the blanket of rolling thunderheads above, trapped also was the heat. 

The heat of the day, held captive, now the heat of the midnight. Warm. Animal. Sultry. 

She willed the girl to hurry. Hurry through the woods and follow my voice, it fills your heart and mind and soul, little one. Come to me and find me and I will guide you to the discovery of true wonder. Come and find me, Carmilla, and I will show you true magic in the dark. Because that is where true magic always lives. 

And the little one, her fears of the night and the forest, banished by focused will and thought, pressed on through the darkness of the midnight trees. 

Not all else moved. Everything in the forest seemed to be holding its breath. All that dwelled in the wild that night was afraid. Everything held still. Locked in a primal fear felt throughout all of the leaves and growth. 

Little Carmilla came to the clearing and the rocks where the wolfen woman dwelled. The rock jutted from the soil like a dagger in the back of the earth. It hung over a small pond of fetid stagnant water. But the filth of the grubby pondscum water was deceived by the sudden light of the moon. Suddenly bled in, a stab wound in the cloud coverage on high let the pale light bleed in and down onto the Earth, the water became aglow. The wolfen woman stood on hind legs in its rays and began to change shape. 

Carmilla could hardly believe her eyes. Her little heart warmed, delighted. Thrilled that not all of the magic of the world was made-up nonsense. Here it was. Alive and well and before her eyes. 

Zaleska saw all of this, saw the wonder on the child's face and in her wide believing face, and smiled. 

She too, was delighted. 

“Good evening, little one. And thank you so much for coming, I missed you so dearly, I couldn't begin to tell you. You absolutely could not fathom." 

Her smile stretched and grew teeth. Teeth that were sharp and darkled like jewels just below the eyes that also danced with shining moving light. 

Camrilla was so eager, so excited, she couldn't help herself. She came right out with it, “Will you take me away this time? Like you promised? Will you take me away from this place? I want to go live in a castle now." 

Zaleska laughed. Pleased. 

“So eager… so eager to leave… aren't we…?” 

"Yes,” said Carmilla, "I don't want to clean anymore, I want to live high in a tower, close to the clouds and heaven and the angels and God like the nobles. Like you do. And I want to be magic like you, can you teach me?”

Zaleska laughed again. Harder. 

"So impatient! And demanding too…” 

Carmilla whined, "you mean you won't?” 

The Countess finished off a bout of laughter before she finally said:

"Of course I will, of course… But we must remember our manners, mustn't we…? We must remember to ask correctly when we're requesting something, especially something so grand, and spectacular… Don't you think so, little one?" 

Carmilla, suddenly reinvigorated and enthusiastic again, began to vigorously nod her little head in compliance. Her words soon joined: “Yes! yes! yes! please! Please! Please, Countess Zaleska! please take me away and make me magic like you!" 

Zaleska's grin stretched further. Grew to rictus. Then became wolfen again as she stepped forward to the child. 

“Ok, child. Ok. Come here. Come closer…”  

…

The townsfolk were gathered in the church. Uneasy and tense. All present were tense and terse. All were grim. Another child had been snatched. 

Though not yet found, all gathered, her parents included, more than readily expected to find the bloodless bag of child corpse in due short time. Like the others. 

All the others. 

Word from other nearby villages was report that they too were missing children. 

All of them. 

The fear of what once was and was thought long gone, banished… had now come back for another turn at the breaking wheel. Their children, all of their young, cruelly chosen as the limb selected to be delivered the coming blow. The little ones were where the terror had chosen to be aimed and directed. 

And delivered. 

Delivered. Without mercy. Or compunction. 

Boys and girls were just taken, like that – with no notice. What was delivered back were lifeless broken dolls. 

Little corpses. Cold. And drained of blood. 

Some of them mutilated. Ripped apart. As if by a ravenous beast. 

The priest of the town led the proceedings. He introduced himself and was quiet. Then said, 

“Another child was snatched last night, Carmilla," he motioned to the parents, some looked, some just kept their downward glances. Many held intense eyes on the priest. 

A beat. The priest met their intensity through gaze and matched it. Eyes leveled, he scanned the crowd. 

Then went on, 

“We’ve seen this evil at work before. Not a mere man. But all the signs show, the bodies recovered all bare the signs." 

Whispers, then, amongst the gathered crowd. To themselves and with one another. 

Strigoi – Strigoica 

Vvurdalak

Nosferatu 

Were-beast

Wraith

Dæmon

Abhartach

Vampire.

The hungry undead.  All of them were different names for the same foul disease, in mocking bipedal human shape. 

The priest did not hush the commotion, he let it carry on and patter til it ceased. They needed to all be aware. 

A beat. 

The whispers died down to silence once more. 

The priest went on: “Then we are all one of the same mind." A beat, “Good." A beat, “then there may be deliverance yet…" 

The talk went on. Debate. 

Verdict was reached. 

Curfew. None out after dark save those assigned sentry on each respective night, they would rotate and nearly all able bodied men would have turn to stand watch nightly, the town. 

The bitter and heavy hearts concluded their meeting no less broken, but determined. They had some sort of plan now, they were all taking some form of action. 

Wolfsbane and garlic flowers would be strewn liberally all about the town and the houses and homes. Every farmstead. Every public place of gathering. 

That left only the surrounding wild woods. And the treacherous mountains themselves, accursed and lording over the dwarfed little village. 

Carmilla’s mama and papa dispersed with the others and departed for home. All were careful not to be caught out after dark. They feared the sunset. All of them. Especially the families that still held fast their children.

Held steadfast. And ever closer to worsening breaking hearts that threatened to shatter. Break completely. And then grow harsh and colder and bitter. Wounds that never heal. A town of parents disgraced, afraid. 

The priest prayed to the Lord of Mercy and divine intervention, please… for the town. Spare them. 

Spare them this wolfen hungry wraith. Whatever has come back to life in Castle Dracula, please let it leave us in peace. Let it find its hunting grounds elsewhere. 

Please God. Take this blight away that blasphemes You, by wearing the shape of Your Image! Cast it away…

Countess Zaleska watched this all from her tower and laughed.

…

Carmilla's father was dozing off, in the rocking chair of the main room by the front door. Beside the fireplace, when a sudden scream in the night brought him out of exhausted sleep. He flew to his feet, still dressed in his filthy day's wear, rifle in his hands he whirled and then covered the short distance to his own bedroom. 

The scream had belonged to his wife. He was sure of it. 

And his suspicion was confirmed when he burst into the room. His wife was sat up in bed, blankets pulled to her face in fright like a child wanting to hide. But that wasn't all…

Something was pixie perched in the open window. Crouched and bent and hunkered in bestial goblin shape. But it was a shape he thought he might nonetheless recognize. 

Then his eyes attuned to the dark and he lost his breath. The words escaped his lips, windless: –

“... Carmilla?" 

Tittery, cruel and saccharine childish girlish giggles came from the little silhouette of beastly shape in the window. A smile, white, gleamed and grew in the night. 

And the eyes. The eyes seemed to disappear then reappear like flashing jewels that sometimes shone an animal shade of scarlet/pink. 

"Yes, papa! Yes, it's me! Tell Mama to stop being silly.”

His wife shouted his name in bottled terror: “Cristian!" 

Carmilla in the dark, in the window, tittered more bright cruel child laughter. As if playing a game. 

“See, papa! She only uses your name in front of me when she's upset! She's so foolish, isn't she papa? She always was. You've always thought so." 

Cristian, father of the sweet little nine year old Carmilla, surprised himself with what he did next. He leveled his rifle at the waist, pointing it at the laughing shape in the midnight dark of the window. 

He growled: "Get the hell out of my home, whatever you are! You are not welcome here, demon! You are not welcome in this house!” 

A beat. 

And then the laughter of the thing grew. Sharper. More cruel and twisted and sadistic. 

Then the bastard child shape of the dark, perched, said sweetly, “But papa, mama's already invited me in…” 

Cristian looked to his wife, Consuela, with dread stealing over his darkening heart. 

She looked wide eyed and pleading, "I'm sorry! Please, I didn't know, I thought she was a dream, and I thought she was home, and she… she just… asked…” 

Cristian looked back to the shape in the window. 

Carmella began to crawl in. 

"You know, papa, you should be really proud. All of the other children before me weren't chosen, they were just meat. That's what she said, pa. ‘Just meat’. But not me. No. She chose me, special, papa. And now I am sired and I feel wonderful. More wonderful and powerful than ever. I can show you, daddy. I can show you and mama too.” 

She began to crawl towards them. Tittering and giggling, girlish little squeals. 

The rifle was leveled once more, pointed at the crawling shape. 

Carmilla just laughed, "Oh! That won't work, silly papa! You know it won't…” 

Grim hopeless dread, cold and heavy stole over his chest and guts, the vacant place where his heart should be. 

Consuela wished to flee but terror kept her bound to the bed. 

The thing crawled in further. 

"I do wish you'd get rid of these stinky flowers though, papa. They are revolting and cloying and I HATE THEM!” 

And with that and without any warning, she lunged with animal speed. Lunged and took her father Cristian to the ground. 

The rifle went off. The struggle was over quickly. 

Cristian lay still in a growing pool of warm dark. 

Consuela shrieked as the child shape tittered and then began to lap up the pool of her husband's blood. 

Like a dog. Like a wild mongrel beast. 

A wild animal that's gotten a taste for manflesh and red. 

It was with this last terrible sight that Consuela prayed for forgiveness from the Lord on high. Prayed aloud and to the heavens for mercy and that she was sorry for failing her duties as a wife and a mother. 

Carmilla laughed at her. And then lunged again. 

Telling her that God could not hear her. 

He was deaf to all of the screaming of the Earth. 

…

The mutilated bodies were found the next day. Midday, when the sun held high and center of the blue. He hadn't been seen and he hadn't come to the shop for his usual grain and feed. 

The ghastly scene was worse than any had ever beheld prior. None of them had ever seen such carnage. Such heartless wanton slaughter of two innocent people. A man and his humble wife. 

Parents. That'd just lost their child.  

…

Another town meeting was held. More drastic measures were decided upon. And taken. 

A horseman, their fastest, the swiftest rider in town was dispatched. With simple yet absolutely vital mission. He should come if the message was properly delivered and conveyed. 

Find him. Find the doctor who was also a hunter of sorts. A hunter of these strange and terrible things. He was said to be able to identify and destroy such beasts. It was said that he had already sent such felled creatures back to the abyssal chasm from whence they had came… 

The rider, Florin, was dispatched. And sent. 

Find him….find the one called Abraham Van Helsing. 

And God willing, bring him here so that he may deliver us!!

The assistant had been in town when young Florin had flown. His ear to the ground and the right subtle inquiries to the right fools told him the rest. 

All he needed to know. 

He returned to the castle in secret. When his master awoke, he told her of the plan of the townsfolk. 

And together they shared heartless wicked laughter, the fools! The fools! They had no idea! 

Professor Abraham Van Helsing was dead. Long dead. Food for the maggots and the worms in the womb of soil that was his grave. 

Zaleska could still recall visiting the site. And spitting on it. 

Carmella came awake then and she too joined in their laughter. She loved to be with them, the Countess and her loyal assistant, her new mother and father. 

They were such a wonderful and happy family. 

… 

Egnaw groaned. All of his misshapen form seemed to be nothing but pain and weight. He couldn't move. Stunned. Perhaps paralyzed. But none of this held candleflame to the predicament he now found himself in. 

The thing, the creation, was huge. Powerful. It held him in one massive clawed hand, attached to a powerful arm of stitched and patchwork muscle tissue and limb. The eyes were vulpine red and animal alive and wide and they seem to bore holes into him. 

The creation shrieked in his face, then brought him in as it lunged in with its wide open mouthed face. 

The fangs sank in and the thing began to suck. And drink. Deeply. 

Strange and unholy euphoria stole over the poor man servant slave then. Not the first in his bloodline to both serve… and then curse the name of Frankenstein! 

He was grogged and fogged of thought,. disoriented as if drugged. He couldn't tell where they were. Or how long it had been since the tower's collapse. 

Since the experiment.

An experiment that had been all too successful. And only to be sabotaged suddenly in the end. 

He cursed his master, Henry Frankenstein, looking at his bound and unconscious form, lying in the dirt. As he himself was held aloft by the throat. 

The creation, it's powerful stolen fangs of mad science and witch doctory, sank into his misshapen frame just below and underneath the armpit. 

He sucked. And sucked. Pulling more and more precious warm living scarlet from the ugly bloodbag. 

The creation had its fill. Then moved on, the bloodbags still bound and trussed. 

Still dragged through the dirt. Some of them semi-conscious and cursing, screaming. Threatening. Begging…

… pleading. Pleading for help. Pleading for mercy. 

Help us please… arose pitifully from the dirt. 

And was promptly ignored. By both God. 

And monster. 

The creation knew to sleep by day. Instinct and magic innate told him. 

And the mountains, those too were instinct. And magic. 

And they were still calling him. 

Something lived there, something that would have him. 

It called. 

Drawing ever nearer, he was just starting to be able to hear and discern the tidal wave tumult of the words to the mountains song. 

And dragging the bloodbags behind him like large satchels that carried precious cargo, the creation continued on towards them. Their outline and shape gaining more detail and growing more to staggering towers as he took each heavy animal step. 

The mountains called. And Egnaw wondered if his master, Frankenstein would ever awake. 

TO BE CONTINUED…