Stains of Blood and Sin

Link to article: Stains of Blood and Sin.

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text= A young vampire hunter is condemned to the ultimate punishment for the crime of defying his rulers. Can he find redemption, or will the weight of his sins drag him to the depths of hell?]]
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CW: Suicidality & Suicidal Ideation
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,,[[[xhawk77x|More by this Author]]],,
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Alin sat frozen in the corner of his cell, as far as possible from the still, bloodless body of his youngest brother, Vali. Vali, who he had taught to read. Vali, with whom he had played in the woods on bright sunny days. Vali, who he had comforted through sickness and through loss. Vali, to whom he had sworn that he would never let anyone harm him, not even the Count.

It hadn’t been the Count who’d drank him in the end, but that did not mean Alin had kept his promise.

How could he be so naïve as to think he could simply rally his people against the vampire that had been ruling them for more than two centuries? To think such an attempt would be met with anything but brutal vengeance?

Alin would have been happy to die to free his people, so the Count hadn’t killed him. He’d turned him, then, one by one, he’d locked him in a cell with every single person in his village. Each time, Alin had sworn anew that no hunger could ever make him feed on them. Each time, his hunger had grown and grown until it overpowered him. Until he had devoured his friends, his cousins, his mentor, his own mother, and, last of all, Vali.

Alin still wanted to believe this was a nightmare. That he might awaken to find himself still living, in an unruined village, surrounded by friends and family, but he knew better. In his unbeating heart, Alin knew that this was no dream. His damnation was real and eternal. He had devoured all those he had once hoped to protect.

Footsteps echoed down the hall as the Count approached his cell. His keen, vampiric ears ensured he had several long minutes to dread Dracula’s approach. As The Count rounded the corner and stepped into view, his scent, that awful mix of scarlet blood and pallid roses, assaulted Alin.

Perhaps he did not have the right to loathe it. His breath reeked of blood as well.

“Oh, my,” Dracula said, looking down at Vali’s bloodless body as he approached. “Something seems to have gone terribly wrong. I do believe it has only been three nights since you so sweetly reassured this boy that you would not devour him. What in the world happened?”

Alin glared up at the Count. “I have no patience left for your games,” he said. “Just kill me.”

Dracula reached into his pocket and pulled out a large iron key, with which he opened Alin’s cell. Until now, Alin had always tried to escape when the cell was opened, but there was no longer any point. Everyone the Count could use against him was already dead.

Dracula entered the cell. He did not bother to close the door behind him. “Kill you?” The Count shook his head. “My, my, my, there seems to have been a terrible misunderstanding.” Dracula walked up to Alin and stooped to look him in the eye. “I have no intention of killing you.”

“Why not?”

“Because you want me to.”

And he did. How could he not? After what he’d turned into. After what he’d done? “What are you going to do, then?” Alin asked, trying and failing to shove the weakness from his voice.

“I’m going to let you go.”

“Why?”

“Because so long as you have only tasted human blood while in this chamber, you will be able to tell yourself that I forced you to do it. That you never would have killed if I’d given you access to the blood of beasts.”

“Of course I wouldn’t have!”

“Yes, you would. Not as soon. Not on people you know, but you would have, and you will. Only once that’s proven, only once you’ve tasted blood of your own free will shall your punishment be complete. Therefore…” Dracula thrust his hand down and grabbed Alin’s wrist. Alin tried to pull away, but his sire was centuries older than him, and that meant he was far stronger. Gripping the wrist in one hand, Dracula used the other to pull off the enchanted ring that suppressed Alin’s vampiric powers. “You are free to go,” Dracula said. “You’ve my blessing to move freely about my lands and feed on their inhabitants, be they beast or man.”

Alin glanced up at the small window at the top of his cell. Without that ring, there was no longer anything stopping him from turning into a bat and flying away.

“I still don’t understand,” Alin said. “Surely you know I’ll simply destroy myself?”

“Will you?” Dracula asked. “Would that free you from your torment? Do you not remember your words to me before I turned you? I am a creature of the devil. I am damned. Tell me, what do you suppose awaits you after death?”

“Certainly nothing compared to what awaits you!”

Dracula just smiled. “And yet, I do not think you will rush toward your final fate, whose fires will be all the hotter should you add the sin of suicide to your many murders.”

He was right. Even though the Count likely didn’t believe the words himself, he was right. What awaited Alin beyond death was already intolerable. To seek his own destruction would make it that much worse.

Of course, so would the further murders his hunger would inevitably drive him to.

Then, a third option occurred to him. A means by which he might escape further condemnation. He acted on it straight away, hoping to take his sire by surprise. With all the speed he could muster, he sprung to his feet and lunged toward Dracula, bearing his fangs.

It was a hopeless fight, against a foe many times stronger than him, but that didn’t matter. It was surely no sin to attack such a monster, and, when the Count destroyed him, Alin would be free.

Dracula jumped back to dodge the fledgling’s clumsy strike. He landed a few paces to the left, and Alin fell forward, his face slamming into the stone below him. By the time he’d scrambled to his feet, Dracula had already turned into a bank of mist and fled.

Alin did the same and attempted to pursue, but Dracula’s mist form was far faster than his own, and there was no hope of Alin catching up to him.

There went his final hope.

No. There was still a way. He didn’t need to catch up to Dracula. He knew where the Count was going. Back to his castle. Even if he went somewhere else first, he would eventually return to his home. Alin had never been to Castle Dracula, but he knew it sat atop a forested mountain many miles to the north. If Alin crossed the long stretch of countryside between this old prison and Dracula’s castle, he could confront the Count again, and this time, it would not be so simple for the Count to retreat.

This time, one of them would perish.

-----

Almost immediately after leaving the prison, Alin contemplated whether he should change from mist form to bat form. The bat was far, far less conspicuous, but, while the cloud of mist was nigh-invincible, the bat was vulnerable. One strike by a hunter or falcon could be the end of him.

Alin took bat form straight away. For a moment afterward, he plummeted toward the ground, but the bat knew instinctively how to catch itself with its wings, and soon, Alin was flying as effortlessly as he might have walked.

This form greatly improved his awareness of the cold, bare forest beneath him. His night vision was superb, and his hearing was even more powerful. As he allowed his human mind to relax, and the bat’s instincts to take over, he found himself using the echoes of his own soft clicks to map his surroundings. Was that a vampire power or something all bats did which his human ears had simply never noticed?

As the night went on, Alin’s hunger emerged into his awareness, then it grew. He tried to force it from his mind. To ignore it. He had fought it down for days at a time when Dracula had denied him access to anything but human prey. He could do the same for the handful of days it would take to reach Castle Dracula.

But, no matter what he did, it forced itself into his awareness. Soon, he could not help but know of every scurrying animal beneath him, from the smallest mouse to the largest boar. He also couldn’t help but feel fatigued. He hadn’t needed to do anything while in his cell. Now, he needed to move. To fly miles and miles, and that took energy.

There was a doe sleeping nearby. Full-grown, but still young and vital.

No! He wouldn’t. Even if this was merely a beast, even if he might have eaten many deer when he was human, he was now an unnatural creature. He had no right to take blood from one of God’s creations to sustain his vile existence.

As Alin passed by the deer, he could hear her soft breath. Hear the working of her heart. Smell her gentle scent. There was food inside her. Not ideal food. Indeed, there was a part of him that was repulsed by the idea of feeding on a mere beast, but more of him longed to quiet the ache in his belly. An ache which did more than cause him pain. An ache which had, mere days ago, been powerful enough to make him plunge his fangs into his own brother.

If he could not save them from his hunger, what chance did he have of sparing any human he happened to encounter?

Alin landed upside-down on a branch above the doe. The creature stirred ever-so-slightly as he approached, but, though she was a skittish creature by nature, she did not view a bat as a predator.

A fatal mistake.

Alin took his human form and fell upon her, pinning her to the ground below. She woke, and she struggled. Her lithe, strong form fought to push Alin off of her, but Alin maintained his grip. He bit the doe’s neck and pressed his lips to the wound.

He couldn’t help but spit out the foul blood as soon as he tasted it.

He’d read that vampires could barely tolerate the taste of animal blood. He’d thought he was prepared for it, but he was not.

The smell was no better. The blood reeked. Its odor befouled the air as it leaked from the wound he’d made. It so overwhelmed his senses he nearly allowed the doe to slip away, but he couldn’t. He needed to feed. He needed to quiet his hunger.

He closed his eyes. He pressed his lips against the wound and drank. He tried to ignore the awful taste. To pull himself out of his surroundings and let his mind wander. His mind did not struggle to settle on a fantasy. He found himself imagining a very different meal. A warmer neck. Hairless, soft, from which sweeter blood might flow.

This fantasy occupied his mind for only a single second before he realized what it was. This realization startled him so greatly that his grip on the doe loosened once again, and, this time, she managed to slip out from under him and dart away.

Alin sat on the dirt as it ran off. Part of him wanted to go after her, but she was fast, and he didn’t have much time to pursue her. The sun would rise soon.

He had no coffin to rest in, but there was no shortage of his homeland’s soil around him. With what time remained before dawn, he dug a hole in the ground and buried himself. He could only hope this makeshift grave would be enough of a coffin to allow him to rest.

-----

After the following dusk, he dug himself out and continued flying.

The mountains in which Dracula’s castle sat should have been visible on the horizon by now. Perhaps not from the ground, but Alin was well above that, and, even as he pulled himself higher on his leathery wings, he didn’t see any trace of those mountains.

Perhaps he did not know the way to Castle Dracula as well as he thought he did.

He landed. He needed to figure out what to do. Unless the sun had begun to rise in the west and set in the east, he really was flying north. Perhaps he was simply slower than he thought he’d be? Maybe, but it could also be that his direction was askew, and he’d been flying on a diagonal path that would miss the castle. He needed to find out for sure. He needed to figure out where he was. Another man could have used the stars to navigate, but Alin did not know them well enough. He had to ask for directions.

No. No, he would find another way. He had to. He couldn’t let a human see him. He couldn’t let himself see a human. What if they realized what he was? What if he lost control?

But he didn’t have any other option. Everything he’d been planning hinged on his finding Castle Dracula. He had no choice.

-----

Alin spent the rest of the night hunting. If he was going to approach a human, he needed his hunger to be as quiet as possible.

However, now that he was desperate, the forest failed him. No matter where he flew, what sound or scent he tried to follow, he could not find anything large enough to sate him.

He managed to catch and consume a handful of small animals. Three rats, a nest of birds, and a small fox, but it was nowhere near enough.

However, not long before dawn, he caught the scent of livestock and followed it to a homestead.

Only once he reached the homestead did it occur to him that these creatures were not his to feed upon. They belonged to whoever lived in this place. He would be a thief if he devoured them.

Part of him thought that concern was comical. His hunger was a matter of life and death. If he did not feed on an animal, he might feed on a human.

However, the whole point of this journey was to avoid staining his soul with further sin. If he let himself rationalize theft, soon he’d find himself rationalizing worse things.

Still, he could get directions from whoever lived here. Though the sun had not risen, it was near enough to doing so that farmers might already be awake, and even if they were not, he could wake them.

Perhaps now was the wrong time. Perhaps he should wait until he’d had a fresh meal? But he didn’t know when that would be. What if that deer had been a lucky fluke? What if it was days before he found better prey? That might leave him in a position of having to approach a human while he was even hungrier than he was now.

He took his human form. Upon doing so, he came face to face with another fact he had forgotten. He was covered in dirt and blood. There was nothing he could do quickly enough about the dirt. He had no way of washing himself. The only water he had any chance of finding out here would be a river, running water, which he wouldn’t be able to enter or cross.

The blood, though, was a more solvable problem. It was mostly on or under his clothes. If he had something to change into, he might be able to have a short conversation without raising suspicion.

Conveniently enough, there was a clothesline behind the homestead, from which he was quickly able to identify suitable garments.

He had just resolved that he wouldn’t steal.

And he wouldn’t. The moment he was done with the clothes, he would place them back where he’d found them.

As he crept toward the clothesline, he was alert for any sign the humans inside had noticed him, but Alin commanded the natural stealth of a predator, and, though there did seem to be someone awake inside, it was not difficult for him to take the clothes unnoticed. He took the simplest ones, those he thought would be least likely to be recognized, then he approached the door. As he did, the woman inside hummed to herself. Alin took a deep breath, then knocked. The woman was silent for a moment, then she approached and opened the door.

She was middle-aged, with dark hair kept in a way that reminded Alin of his mother, a thought he was quick to suppress. She held a lantern, but it was not bright enough that she could see him well. There was curiosity in her eyes as she studied him, but she didn’t seem to realize what he was. The thick veins in her neck pulsed with nectar, the soft scent of her skin alluring like a flower, gently inviting him to feed.

He could control himself. He would control himself.

“What is it?” the woman asked.

“Forgive me for disturbing you at this hour,” Alin said, keeping his head down, lest the woman catch a glimpse of his fangs. “I have been traveling this country for several days, and I fear I’ve become lost. I had thought the mountains would be visible by now, but they are not. I must be off of my intended course.”

“Indeed,” the woman said, her breath carrying a tempting scent. “The mountains are some thirty miles to the east.”

“Thank you,” Alin said. He started to leave.

“Forgive me,” she said, “but I see neither supplies nor horse with you. How did it come about that you are traveling on foot with nothing but the clothes on your back?”

It was a very good question.

“Much of what I traveled with was stolen,” Alin said. So quick to lie. So much for his resolution to avoid any further sins.

“That’s dreadful!” the woman said. “Please, come inside. Let me give you a meal and a place to rest.”

She said it so kindly. So sweetly. As sweet as the blood that pulsed through her veins, its gentle flow singing to Alin that it was his to take.

“No thank you,” Alin said, so quickly that it only made her more concerned. “I cannot impose like that.”

“It is no imposition,” she said. “I do only as I hope would be done for me.”

A pang of hunger echoed through Alin. The sound of the woman’s heartbeat lit the air. He needed to get away from her.

“Please don’t concern yourself with my well-being,” he said. “I will re-supply when next the road leads me to a town.”

“With what coin?”

He struggled to think of an answer. She studied him more closely.

“Tell me one more thing,” she said. “Where are you headed?”

“Toward the mountains, as I said.”

“But why? No one could be so foolish as to attempt to travel //through// the mountains alone or on foot, so your destination cannot be beyond them. There is nothing //between// here and there, which makes me think there is only one place you could be headed.”

He spent a moment trying to think of another lie, but he could already feel his previous lies staining his soul. “I am afraid you’re right,” he said. “I make for Castle Dracula.”

“Why?” she asked. “Surely you know the nature of the beast that dwells there.”

“I do,” he said. “Perhaps now you understand why I might wish to take no one with me. Not even a horse.”

She took a second to consider that. “Wait here a moment,” she said. She retreated inside. After retrieving something, she returned. “Take this,” she said, “that you might at least have something with which to protect yourself.” From her fist, she let dangle a rosary.

It was quite ordinary. At the bottom of a beaded necklace lay a small wooden cross, on which was mounted the crude figure of a man. Such a simple, crude shape. Only wood. Yet, somehow, the flames of hell radiated from it like a furnace wind. It was idolatry to claim such an image literally housed the Lord himself, but Alin could not help but feel God’s judgmental gaze radiate from the icon. Inside it lurked Lord’s own condemnation for his unnatural condition. For the sins he had committed. The screams of his mother and Vali echoed in his mind. His heart wanted to pound with terror, but he was such a foul creature that even that was denied to him.

Alin could not help but reel back in terror.

The woman did not struggle to deduce why. Her eyes grew wide. All sweetness and concern vanished from her expression, replaced by terror and revulsion not unlike what Alin felt at the sight of that cross. She stepped back and stretched her arm out to hold the cross high. “Back!” she shouted. “Back! Away from my home!”

Alin retreated. He ran down the dirt path that led away from her door, and into the forest. She lingered near the door for a moment, then retreated inside. Alin could still hear her scurrying about inside, beginning to wake the other residents of her homestead and warn them of the danger.

Alin’s hunger roared. Retreating inside her home would have normally protected that woman, had she not so sweetly invited him inside mere moments ago. The cross was the only thing she had to protect herself, and if he earnestly tried to feed on her, it wouldn’t be enough. He could devour her. The agonizing emptiness inside his belly screamed at him to do it.

Alin glanced at the barn. There was only one other way he could sate himself. Not totally without sin, but with sin that would pale in comparison to murder. He became a bank of mist and flew over to her barn. He entered through the crack beneath the door.

These animals were not his to feed on, but he had already lied and stolen. What was a bit of cow’s blood if it might prevent him from feeding on a human?

He retook his solid form in the pen of a lone cow. A large creature, with so much blood he would not even need to kill it to sate himself. He leaped upon the animal and plunged his fangs into its neck. It woke. The monster’s blaring cries and pounding hooves made an awful cacophony as it tried to force him off, but his grip was iron, and he was able to feed.

Outside, Alin heard the door open again. He could not see the woman look out at her barn, but, somehow, he still felt her gaze. She did not step outside. Did not venture any closer to her barn, for she knew exactly what sort of creature had invaded it, and what it might do if she drew near.

-----

That was the first of three times Alin fed on an animal during the remainder of his trip to Castle Dracula. The second was a deer he managed to find by using his wolf form to track its scent, a strategy he badly wished he’d thought of earlier. He’d ambushed it much like he had the previous one, only this time, he didn’t lose his grip.

The third was in the village that lay at the foot of the high hills which housed Castle Dracula. There, he found a stable full of horses, from which he drank his fill. There were a dozen of the beasts, and Alin did his best to split his feeding evenly between them, in hopes that none of them would be truly harmed. This allowed him to glut himself with something close to a clear conscience, and he needed to glut himself. The time to confront Dracula had come, and he had to be at full strength if he was to have even the slightest chance of destroying him.

Castle Dracula was high, well-positioned to defend itself from any army that dared approach it on foot. Its walls bore a well-maintained coat of whitewash, but its pointed roofs were blood red.

It was the largest building Alin had ever seen in person, but he couldn’t allow himself to be mesmerized by it. He needed to focus. Even though he fully expected to be destroyed, he was obligated to try his absolute best to destroy Dracula and survive. If he did anything less, this confrontation would be nothing but a sly suicide and would stain his soul just as if he had killed himself with his own hands.

Alin circled the castle from a distance in bat form, hoping to catch a stray glimpse of the Count in some window. He caught exactly that. One of the castle’s front windows, one story up, opened into a bedroom. Dracula sat at the foot of the bed, dressed in blood-stained fineries. In his hands, he clutched an adolescent boy, just a few years younger than Alin himself, upon whom he was feeding.

For a split second, Alin thought it was Vali.

Alin could tell from the sound of the boy’s heart that he was weak. He was struggling as best he could, but he did not have much strength left. This was probably not the first time Dracula had fed on him, but if Dracula was allowed to continue, it probably would be the last.

The boy wasn’t dead yet, though. There was still time to save him.

Alin rocketed toward the open window. As he came close, the Count noticed the approaching bat, but he only had a moment to be puzzled before Alin was inside the castle. Alin shifted mid-air, taking on his wolf form, hoping to use the momentum from his flight to knock Dracula down, and, perhaps, pin him. Instead, he flew directly past Dracula, crashed snout-first into the floor, and tumbled across the room until he smashed into the opposite wall.

It took the Count a moment to realize who Alin was, but once he did, he laughed. He dropped the boy on the ground beside him. Alin scrambled to his feet, ignoring the pain of his hard landing. Snarling, he charged at the Count.

Dracula leapt to one side. Alin turned on a dime to follow him and snap at his legs, but the Count evaded him. As he did, the boy struggled to his feet. He barely had the strength to force himself upright, but he just managed to get to his feet and stumble forward. The Count’s gaze darted toward him, but Alin forced his attention off the boy with another charge. The Count dodged it by entering the hall outside.

As soon as he was in this wider space, the Count took his own wolf form and returned the charge. Dracula’s aim was far better than Alin’s, and the fledgling was soon knocked to the ground. Alin barely managed to roll away from the follow-up attack on his exposed stomach. From there, he lunged at Dracula’s neck. He managed to sink his teeth into it, but the elder vampire’s strength allowed him to rip himself out of that grasp, pulling a few of Alin’s teeth with him. The pain of it made Alin reel back, but he was able to leap away from the follow-up attack. As he did, the boy stumbled out of the room.

Alin wished he could speak. If he could, he would have shouted for the boy to stay inside the room. Dracula was quick to demonstrate why. He turned and ran after the boy. Just before he reached him, Alin pounced on him from behind. Though he did not manage to sink his jaws into the Count’s neck, he did manage to land on top of him, knocking him off balance, causing him to fall to one side.

Both wolves righted themselves. Alin jumped between Dracula and the boy, but the positioning this required left him open to an attack, an opportunity Dracula did not hesitate to take advantage of. Within a moment, he had Alin on the floor. Within another moment, he was pinned. He raked his claws against Alin’s exposed stomach and plunged his jaws into his neck, then thrashed, as if trying to rip off his head.

This was it. This was what Alin had come here for. Though he made a token effort to struggle, Alin waited to find himself gone from this world, engulfed in the fires of perdition he had so justly earned. He would suffer, just as murderous, kinslaying scum should. Even as he burned, he would know he deserved every last second of it, and he would never be able to harm anyone ever again.

The boy grunted as he limped down the hall.

That boy had no chance of escaping. Even with Alin here to fight for him, his odds were slim. If Dracula finished Alin off, any hope that may have remained for him would be gone. He would certainly die.

Alin looked up at the Count. At the enemy who would bring him the sinless death he longed for. In his mind, he whispered an apology to the people of his village. He had hoped to bring their murderer to justice, to bring a righteous death to the one who’d taken them, but he couldn’t. Not today.

Alin took his mist form. Dracula’s jaws harmlessly snapped shut as Alin flew to where the boy limped. He retook his wolf form and sat in front of him. He arched his back and let out a single, quiet bark, praying that the boy would be willing to accept salvation from a monster.

After a moment’s hesitation, he was. He climbed atop the wolf and held on with what little strength that remained in his half-drained body. Alin ran down the hall, but not at full speed. He had to be careful. The boy’s grip was weak, and if Alin ran as fast as he could, he may fall off.

Subject to no such limitation, Dracula was coming up fast behind them.

Alin knew that he was on the castle’s second floor, not far from the front door. It didn’t take long for him to find a spiral staircase leading down. However, the stairs slowed Alin down even further, and soon, Dracula was close enough to nip his tail.

Alin emerged from the stairs into the castle’s ballroom. The front door was in sight. Summoning a desperate burst of speed that nearly made the boy fall off him, Alin made a break for the door. However, before he reached it, Dracula caught up to them and grabbed the boy’s legs in his jaws. The boy’s weak grip quickly failed, and he fell to the ground behind Alin.

Alin spun around. He charged at the Count, and succeeded at chasing him away from the boy, but only for a moment. Alin stood over him and barked. Dracula circled him. Alin tensed, readying himself for his enemy to charge.

Even if the boy climbed back on him, even if they made it outside, where would they go? No matter where they went, Dracula could use his wolf form to follow their scent. His vampiric weaknesses would be of no use because they also applied to Alin. Sending the boy off on his own was out of the question. There was no way he’d make it out of the mountains alone.

There was no scenario where Alin and the boy got away. But that didn’t matter. What could he do but try? It wasn’t as if he could //persuade// the Count to let this boy live.

Alin’s eyes widened. An epiphany. There was something. One bargaining chip, one thing the Count cared about that Alin could threaten.

Alin took his human form.

Dracula looked up at him, confused. He took his human form as well. “What are you doing?” Dracula asked.

“I want to bargain for this boy’s life.”

The statement was so strange that even the boy was visibly surprised.

“Leave my castle,” the Count said. “Clearly you see that there is no saving this morsel. Either I kill him, or I kill the both of you. Leave me to my meal and take one of your own from the village below. The night is young, and the hunting there is always good. I work hard to make sure of that.”

“No,” Alin said. “You’ll have to kill me to get to him.”

“Do you think I won’t?”

“I do.”

For a split second, there was a crack in Dracula’s blank expression. A moment of realization from which he quickly recovered. “Why on earth would you think that?”

“For the same reason you didn’t want to kill me back at the prison. You want me to remain alive until I give into my hunger and feed on another human. I haven’t done that yet. I’ve fed on nothing but beasts as I’ve made my way up here. Your claim that I will one day succumb to my hunger remains unproven. If you kill me now, it will remain so forever.”

“You greatly overestimate your importance, fledgling,” Dracula said. “You truly think I value your life enough that you can coerce me by threatening it?”

“I don’t think you’re willing to give up your perfect revenge for the small amount of blood remaining in this boy.”

Dracula snarled. “You’ve already devoured hundreds, each of them far dearer to you than this stranger.”

Being reminded of his village made guilt well up inside him. He fought it down. He could not allow himself to be distracted. “If I’m wrong, then do it. Kill me.”

Dracula crossed the distance between them. Alin began to shrink away, but he steeled himself and planted his feet. He stood firm as Dracula reached out and grabbed his neck. His grip was painful. He jerked, as if trying to snap Alin’s neck, or rip off his head. There was hate in his eyes, but Alin stood firm, until, at last, Dracula let go.

“Fine,” the Count said. “Take the boy if you want him so badly. I will simply find another meal.”

“No, you won’t. I’ll stay in the village. If you want to kill anyone there, you’ll have to go through me.”

“How long do you imagine I will allow this petty trick to prevent me from feeding?”

“Just one night. One life saved.”

Dracula glared at him. Then, his face shifted into an awful smile. “Very well, my insolent spawn,” he said. “I will content myself with the considerable amount of blood I have already taken from this boy. If you wish to remain in the village below to verify that I am a man of my word, go right ahead. However, at dusk tomorrow, I will venture down there, and if you are anywhere in sight—”

“You’ll kill me?”

“Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you? I suspect that’s why you came here. But you’re right. I don’t want you to die before my point is proven, so I won’t kill you, and I won’t kill the boy either. If I suffer any further insolence from you, I will do to this boy as I did to you. I will turn him, and I will force him to devour everyone in that village, one at a time, just as you did.”

Alin glanced down at the boy. He could hear his heart pounding. “Fine,” Alin said, as firmly as he could. “You’ll never hear from me again.”

“Moreover,” Dracula continued, “should you ever take any action that denies me my revenge. Should you ever destroy yourself to protect those around you, in fact, should you perish by //any means whatsoever//, I will do it all, just as if you had defied me again. If, somehow, the boy is not available, I will find another like him. Hundreds will die, and all of it will be on your oh-so-noble conscience.”

If Dracula was right, simply staying alive doomed him to kill again. It was inevitable that he would one day give into temptation and feed on more humans. By accepting this ultimatum, Alin was swearing that he would maintain his willpower forever. That he would never falter, no matter how many hundreds of years he lived, something that, as far as Alin knew, no vampire had ever managed.

But what else could he do?

“Understood,” Alin said.

“Very well, then,” Dracula said. “Leave.”

Alin reached down and offered a hand to help him to his feet. “Come,” he said. “Let me get you home.”

The boy looked up at him. “You’re…”

“Don’t worry about it,” Alin said. “You’ll never see me again after tonight.”

The boy studied him for a moment, full of trepidation, but, in the end, he seemed to realize that Alin was his only way back home.

Once the boy was on his feet, Alin once again took his wolf form and arched his back. The boy climbed on. Alin carried him out of Castle Dracula, and down the mountain, stopping just outside the village. The boy dismounted, and he took his human form. “This is as far as I should take you,” he said. “No one should see you with me. Don’t tell anyone I was the one to rescue you. There’s no telling what assumption they might make.”

“I won’t tell anyone,” the boy said.

“Good.”

“Do you really think you can do it?” the boy asked. Alin went still. “Not hurt anyone, I mean?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Probably not. I’d be the first.”

“I hope you do.”

“Me too.”

“Thank you,” the boy said.

“You’re welcome,” Alin said. With that, he retook his bat form and flew off.

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