barbarians! Madmen! Once you have supped on their blood, and they have tasted your wrath, truly they will come to know what the word “barbarian” means.
“Good day!”
“Good day,” you reply to the just-so gentleman in the summer frock coat, accompanied by a timid, plain woman and two frightened children.
He and his family stop, wanting to continue this pointless exchange with a stranger. “The weather has turned for the better,” he remarks.
“England possesses a most fortuitous clime,” you comment.
“Yes,” the wife responds nervously, glancing furtively at her husband as though seeking approval for her vocalization.
She is plainer, that is certain, yet she resembles Lucy—fair hair and eyes, arched brows, high cheekbones, long, slim throat…
The man leans upon his ivory-tipped cane, content with his lot in life, the world his oyster, it seems. “I take it you are from Europe.” His face smiles, yet you are keenly aware of the distrust beneath this facade. He has encountered a foreigner. One alien. He must assess you rapidly, fit you neatly to a slot in order to “know” you.
“Indeed,” you say, “you are correct. I am Transylvanian.”
The woman, eyes dulled by incomprehension, stifles a gasp. The girl child a yawn. The boy his urge to run with the pack of children from the lower class, their shirttails flying, short breeches dirty. Children his mother looks on with disapproval.
The man repeats, “Transylvania…” scanning a mental map. You see that he has pegged you. “Eastern European,” he now says confidently. “Northeastern Balkans, correct me if I am wrong.”
“You are not wrong,” you inform him, although the satisfied nod is annoying. He feels he now has you classified and can rest. He wears the mask of intelligence laced with safety and certainty. A veil of correctness that hides control. Control born of fear.
Perhaps you should inform him that this meaningless exchange will not assure that blood remains in his veins. That if you had a mind to bleed him dry like an enormous leech, you would do so, could do so. His destiny rests in your hands.
“James Holbrook,” he says, extending a hand. “Barrister-at-law.”
You shake his hand, the current custom here, adopted from North America apparently, and revel in the warmth of this mortal’s flesh and the throbbing cauldron ablaze beneath that epidermis. These sensations cause you to tremble slightly with anticipation. “Count Dracula,” you inform him.
His thin eyebrows lift. He is impressed with your station, as he should be, and yet more relieved. Here he is, in the presence of what he deems to be his own class, no, a class to which he aspires. “My wife Elizabeth,” he says informally, adding, “my son John junior, and my daughter Caroline,” and he pats the little girl on the top of her head of yellow curls. Caroline stares up at you with large eyes that provide no challenge, since she is already under the natural spell of childhood.
“It is a pleasure,” the wife says, beginning a curtsy, which she curtails because of indecision. She is not quite certain what to do with foreign royalty.
In the distance, a familiar howl, one you recognize. The sound sends a shiver through the woman. She is as one entrapped behind a glass prison, a prison whose panes you could easily crash through and shatter—
“I take it you are a visitor to our England,” the man says crisply. “Am I correct?” He asks questions as if they are statements, as though he is in a courtroom, before a judge, arguing a case rather than engaging in a dialogue.
“I am.”
“We are very proud of our city of London. And the gardens here. I hope you’ve been enjoying your stay in our fair land, taking in the sites, the marvels of the modern, civilized world.” His hand sweeps with a gesture of ownership, as though he not only possesses but has created all of which he speaks.
You have been on this unfamiliar soil but a short while and yet you far prefer the ruggedness that is your heritage to the cultivated “marvels” he so obviously idolizes. In Transylvania, the harsh beauty reminds you that survival is always a struggle. The environment itself forces a warrior to be alert to danger, rather than lulling him into a torpor which leads to demise. This man is surrounded by a hundred dangers yet has convinced himself he is invincible. Your attitude, the one you were born with, the one you died with, the one you continue to rely on in this existence is in tune with nature— for are not the animals, even the insects, on guard always, alert to predators? That is nature’s way. What is wrong with these Englishmen that you can walk among them, speak with them, touch them, and their every sense is dead to danger?
They laugh and talk and ignore you, other than the odd glance or remark focused on your foreignness, which always fosters comments to prove they are superior. They delude themselves with silly thoughts that suggest supremacy. It is their weakness, and will be their downfall.
“Have you been to Piccadilly?” the wife ventures.
You stare into her faded eyes, a bold gesture, and watch as conflicting emotions dance within her— she is trapped by your gaze. Attraction and repulsion vie for position. Paralysis is the outcome.
The man instinctively feels this threat and takes her elbow, which causes her to look away. Her cheeks redden with embarrassment.
“Well then,” the man says. “We shall be off. The children want to ride the carousel, you know. And we would hate to impinge.”
You feel a twinge of respect for him now. At least he has the sense to recognize peril in one regard.
He tips his hat, and you return the gesture, glancing at him, bowing slightly to his wife, who seems afraid to look at you again, and that causes you to smile. The distracted children are like barely ripe plums, not ready yet for the brandy maker. But the woman…
The family turns by rote at the cue of the man and begins to wander toward the carousel. You watch them stop at the cotton candy vendor. The children receive a cone each of pink sugar fluff. The wife surreptitiously glances back in your direction.
“Yes, my lovely,” you whisper. “I could easily shatter the walls of your prison and you would belong to me as you so long to.”
A delicious look of lust and dread flickers through her eyes, and she turns away abruptly.
You laugh, drawing stares from the crowd.
So many warm-bloods! Their numbers spiral to infinity, like drops of water in the ocean, stars in the sky. They bask in the sunshine, light which has, over half a millennium, become increasingly abhorrent to you. It would not surprise you if soon you can no longer tolerate these fiery rays and prefer to sequester yourself entirely in the indirect light of the moon. You are so unlike these mortals, who believe the light beneficent. Who have recently created sunlight in small globes of glass and this, like their other inventions, leads them to believe they are conquering nature. All in an attempt to master death. But it is you who are the Master of Death. And you have done this by adhering to your true essence, something these peasants cannot imagine.
That they should envision themselves greater than nature, that they believe they can control eventualities with their industries, both amazes and amuses you, the latter in a grim way. You survey the skyline of London, blotted with inky smoke from their factories, fumes that choke the air, and you wonder: are they insane?
They cannot breathe. They die of illnesses brought about by their own wicked habits, and yet they place such childish faith in science—even now, they believe they can replace the blood in the veins that you have drained, blood that calls to you as the lark calls to her mate. Oh, these straight-backed fools! The strict and serious
You cannot even pity them. Are they not less worthy of compassion than these caged animals you approach? The mortals ignore their carnal instincts while you indulge yours. They are to you as the beasts are to them— inferior. It is your right by virtue of your superiority to take them. They will become your eternal storehouse at which you will sate your hungers.
They call this park the London Zoological Gardens. To either side are structures the living have built to amuse themselves. Such romantic, pastel buildings, with domed roofs and arched wrought iron gates. There! Close up. The electrical carousel, the painted ponies dipping and lifting to the music, in imitation of the horses you once rode into
