Dracula (No Relation)
“I know it’s a classic, but it’s also dull,” Anatole D’Mycenea said, dropping her film tie-in copy on her lap. “Who on earth would ever willingly choose to read some newspaper clippings and a dullard’s letters?”
Silence spread around like snakes abandoning a house fire. She felt the eyes of some of the others seated around tables scattered haphazardly across the wooden-floored, bookcase-lined warren that was the Reading Room Common. Anatole sat forward with an obstinately demure huff. “Still dull,” she added.
“That is the entirety of the point,” Baron Trenchant De Breizh said without looking up from her interrogation of the cover of the book. “Besides, wasn’t it you and I who spent an entire night going through someone else’s letters? Madame Babineaux, I believe.”
“The Widow Babineaux was interesting, at least. She had all kinds of affairs and alchemical recipes. Men duelled to the death over her, you know.”
“Those recipes were for baking quiche if I’m not mistaken,” Trenchant said.
“I think I’d know the difference between a recipe for baked goods and one for…”
As her voice trailed off, it reflected the deafening silence met by her statement.
“Who’s this Dracula related to, anyway. Do any of you know?” Fenrir, Jarl Blutenheim interjected, adjusting his reading glasses on his battle-scarred nose. His copy was dog-eared and annotated in various places with thick lines, circled stars, and scattered words in a language that wasn’t English.
“He’s fictional,” Seth D’Asur said in a quiet voice from the corner of the room, snapping his notebook closed. “Couldn’t possibly be one of ours.”
“Many books are inspired by our deeds,” Fenrir rumbled.
Trenchant stared into the middle distance.
“Well, I for one would be most surprised if Dracula waltzed in here and said, ‘Good evening, I am Dracula, and that book ruined my life,” Seth replied.
“So would I, as he dies in the end,” Trenchant said, expression unchanged.
“Lovely!” Anatole huffed, flopping back in her chair. “Spoil it for all of us, why don’t you?”
“The book’s older than the little prince there,” Fenrir said, waving his copy in Seth’s direction.
“What book here isn’t?” Trenchant added.
“Hardly a spoiler,” Fenrir finished.
“It’s most certainly not older than I am,” Seth said, his voice a little sharper than he would have preferred. “I remember the publication, and I bought this first edition.” He held up his pristine tome for the inspection of the others.
“Like I was saying,” Trenchant said. “Stoker wrote Dracula as a sort of metafiction, told through the avant-garde communication science of his time. Telegraph, printed newspaper and the like.”
“Don’t remember telegraphs,” Fenrir muttered, paging to an annotation to get a first-hand account of the object in question.
Trenchant laughed. “Slept right through it, Dear-”
The bomph, bomph, bomph of heavy feet on carpeted wooden stairs silenced the room.
Footsteps were coming their way.
All eyes turned to the room’s proprietor, Virgil Cavendish, but his eyes were also fixed on the beaded curtains at the base of the stairs leading down from the bookstore above.
“Not expecting anyone else, Mr Cavendish?” Trenchant asked.
“No matter to engender concern,” Cavendish said, loud enough for everyone to hear. “Whoever it is to arrive so unannounced and uninvited will know that in this accorded space, guest and host right will be respected to the fullest.”
Anatole affected a shudder before returning to inspect the book with annoyance rippling across her candid expressions.
“Do you have no clue who it could be?” Seth asked.
“Whoever it is blew right past Cavendish’s hospitality as well as his fancy magi wards,” Fenrir said, still intent on his referencing.
Cavendish spared him a brief dark look before setting his shoulders and striding to meet whoever had made it to the bottom of the stairs.
He stopped.
Long thin fingers parted the beads, and an olive-skinned, round-shouldered man pressed through. He was thin-faced, hook-nosed, and sported a glorious moustache that was only matched in density by his eyebrows which hovered over dark, sunken eyes. His red-trimmed black cape swished as he entered the room, briefly embattled by the beaded curtain.
Cavendish grimaced as the stranger spent more time than was necessary disentangling himself. The grimace deepened when his gaze fell on the mud-caked boots.
The stranger looked up, making eye contact with almost everyone in the room, before settling his eyes on the book that Seth D’Asur still held, now rather limply, aloft.
“Good evening,” the stranger said, his voice raspy, dry, and thickly accented. “I am Dracula, and that damned book ruined my life.”
A long silence met that proclamation before high, fluted laughter came from Trenchant’s armchair.
“Apologies,” she said. “It’s not… You…” her gaze drifted over the stranger’s figure, and a long strand of beads from the curtain still draped over his shoulder and the debris of his entrance pendulum-waving behind him.
“It’s not,” he replied, somewhere between questioning her sincerity and asking with genuine grace.
“No,” Fenrir rumbled, his glasses slipping down his nose. “Rather, an obscure reference to-”
“Did you just say that you are Dracula?” Anatole interjected.
Seth had sat back in his chair, his well-kept copy resting on his crossed knees.
“I am,” proposed-Dracula replied, his voice stern.
“As in, the titular character of this… Charming book?” Trenchant continued.
“Charming,” he scoffed. “Did you not hear what I just said?”
“If you’re the vampire Dracula,” Seth said. “How then did you enter this place-”
The collected readers gave a collected shudder of repulsion at the continued use of the word ‘vampire.’
Trenchant pursed her lips to one side. “I suppose what the little prince is inferring is that you got through the wards. Uninvited. No denizen of night could have done that.”
“Not even a denizen’s rat,” Anatole said, her voice humming with innocence.
By his lack of reaction, it was clear the man didn’t quite catch the drift.
“I was called. By my true name,” he replied. “And besides, there was a sign on the door. It said, ‘Welcome’.”
“…Ms Hart!” Cavendish’s cane struck the floorboards hard, and he stood, his expression thunderous. “I told that child to leave the sign off the damn door. Excuse me.”
Trenchant tittered a laugh behind her hand.
“Well, that’s something,” Seth said, making a note in his notebook.
“Well, as you’re here, you may as well sit,” Trenchant said, waving an imperious hand towards an armchair by the empty fireplace.
The man gave a curt bow, hesitated, then took the seat, flicking the last strand of beads from his cape.
“I assume you’ve read this book, Count-?”
“That’s Voivode,” the stranger said, his tone sharp as he interrupted Seth’s quiet question. “That little fool of an Irishman couldn’t even keep my title squared.”
“Voivode…” Seth said, expression perplexed as he thought it through. “Dracula, Son of the Dragon- And that would make you Vlad the third, correct? You were Prince of Wallachia on three separate occasions, if I’m not mistaken?”
The man’s expression grew less dark, but brightened wasn’t quite the right word to describe what happened next. He squared his shoulders, and his chin lifted to look Seth in the eye.
“I’m glad to see someone else is discerning enough to see through this tripe.”
He gestured at the books.
“The little prince likes to read,” Anatole said with flippant dismissal in her voice. “I wouldn’t put much stock in his discerning nature. That being said, you are still alive,” she gave Trenchant a pointed look. “There must be some other dishonesty in Stoker’s little ray of fame, yes?”
“That I am of the undead is about all he managed to get right.”
“No hairy palms then?” Trenchant enquired, voice lilting with innocence.
The man stifled a groan. “Harker…” he growled. “That man was obsessed with sex. Nothing short of a bore in conversation, let me tell you. He spent most of his time insisting that sex was to be kept between a husband and wife, behind closed doors. Etcetera. I assume this hairy palm business was his attempt to get back at me for my…extracurricular activities.”
“He didn’t like your choice in whom you extracurriculared?” Anatole asked, her smile becoming predatory.
Trenchant grimaced.
“I presume he did not. Mina was so lovely.”
“Who the hell is Mina?” Anatole demanded.
“She did not read the book,” Fenrir stated, his voice a low rockslide.
“Irrelevant.”
“Harker’s wife,” Dracula went on. “She was… Less of a bore than her dullard husband. Didn’t hurt that she looked like someone I knew so long ago…”
“So Jonathan Harker was real?” Seth enquired, trying to rally the topic.
“Too much so,” Dracula said, crossing his legs and leaning his head back. “I was starved while he stayed under my roof. He went back to London and thought holy wafers and crucifixes could stave off the change. Little fool.” He sighed. “He followed me from city to city, writing letters and calling at all hours of the night to accuse me of ruining his life! A little too obsessed with the details of my life, for his good.”
“Ah.”
“At any rate,” Dracula continued, his voice growing louder. “I’m convinced, you know, that Stoker was, in fact, Harker. Who else would have these details? And then to twist the details to make me look like some furry-palmed, boob-haired ambulatory corpse.” He shook his head.
“Accurate enough, it seems,” Fenrir stated.
“Not, accurate,” Dracula replied.
“Can you turn into a bat?” Anatole asked, waving her book at him as she leaned back in her chair.
“Of course, I can take the form of many creatures of the night.”
“Ooh! Show us!” Anatole clapped her hands together in glee.
“No.”
“Mist?”
“Yes!”
“Show us that?”
“No!”
“Queen Anne,” Fenrir said. “You’re upsetting our guest.”
Dracula puffed out a humph of mollification.
“Back to the book,” Fenrir continued, finding his reference near the back cover. “How did you survive the stake through the heart and the beheading?”
“I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” Dracula said.
“Oh, come on, Draccy-boy? Your book is the first one of our kind,” Anatole said.
“On the contrary,” Seth said. “There were others before.” He produced a slim volume from his messenger bag. “This is Carmilla, and my submission for our next book to study.”
“Oh good, it’s thin,” Anatole said.
“Not like you’ll read it in any case,” Trenchant added.
“It’ll be good to get away from this dreary character,” Anatole said, seeing if Dracula would surreptitiously change shape. “His book’s so boring!”
“Then you shan’t like that one either,” Dracula said.
“And why’s that?”
“Cause it’s also about me.”
“Carmilla is about a teenage girl vampire who likes girls,” Fenrir muttered.
The attention of the room turned to Dracula.
“I was wearing a wig!”
The attention of the room went to his moustache.
“Facial hair was fashionable back then!”
The room remained unconvinced.
“I don’t need to explain myself to you!” Dracula swished his cape, and disappeared. Mist was probably involved.
A few moments passed in silence, broken only by Fenrir’s cautious page-turning. “I take it we’ll not be reading Carmilla,” he said.
Trenchant sat back and closed her eyes. “I, for one, would not be able to shake the image of a teenage girl vampire with such a luscious moustache, no matter her disposition towards the fairer sex.”
“Seconded,” Seth said, resigned.
“So what are we going to read?” Anatole said.
“I’m sure the little prince has more books in his satchel. He ever-loves to seem prepared,” Trenchant said.
“As a matter of fact,” Seth said, reaching for his bag.
“This one better not be another so-called boring classic!” Anatole warned.
Seth’s hand slowed.
“Give me a book with real romance, a dashing prince, no two dashing princes! And have them fight to the death for the love of the princess! Then drown them all in the sea!” Anatole’s eyes glowed with a luminous seafoam glint.
Virgil Cavendish cleared his throat and approached the table. He had a companion with him, a dark-haired woman with an eyepatch. “Need a book for next time?” he asked. “Dalla Arnesen, my assistant librarian, may have one for you.”
Dalla placed a book in front of the collected Lords of Night.
Fenrir picked up the book.
“Cover’s got three decently good looking specimens on it. The composition is barely art, but what can one expect from modern work.”
Seth’s expression went carefully blank as he attempted to keep the mien of all of his compatriots in view.
“Ye gods of the sea,” Anatole said, deflating. “More journal entries?”
“This one is different. I promise,” Dalla said.
“Settled then,” Fenrir said.
“I’ll read it too,” Dracula said.
“Where the devil did you come from?” Cavendish demanded.
“Never left,” Dracula added, inspecting the book. “I’m in this one too.”
“As I was saying,” Fenrir continued. “Our next book will be The Vampire Diaries.”
