Dracula in Love

your control and explode inside me in a series of frantic thrusts. I wait while you recover your senses, and then you whisper into my ear, “I want to drink from you.”

I push your shoulders back so I can look you in the face. “You do not know what you ask,” I say. Few humans know the secrets of the blood, and I wonder where you have obtained such knowledge.

You look as if I have insulted your manly pride. “I have drunk the blood of others and have only grown stronger.” Your blue eyes are angry and indignant.

“But I carry the blood of the Sidhe. You may grow stronger, but you may also weaken and die. There is no way to tell. Even the soothsayers and seers have failed to predict who will die from our blood, or even from making love to us.”

“I can only stay with you if I am one of your kind. Otherwise, you will tire of me.”

I know there is truth in what you are saying. I often reflect on the cruelty of mortal life, how all things of beauty fade into decay and death. Looking at you, I cannot bear the thought of your degeneration, of the daily pain of watching your skin and muscles shrivel, your spine bend, and the fire fade from your eyes. This could happen to me too, if I give into my mortal heritage, but I have the refuge of my mother’s kingdom to keep me young. You must be reading my thoughts because you take me by the shoulders. “Lady, I am not afraid. Test my strength. If I am too weak, I deserve to die.”

I have enough magic in me to open a place at the base of my throat with a light touch of my fingernail, an incision just big enough for your mouth. I let it fill with the red substance that is my blood. It is brighter than mortal blood, the color of cranberries, and more luminous, and I see that this surprises you. Without giving you a chance to change your mind, I press your head to my throat and let you drink.

Chapter Sixteen

31 October 1890

Every nerve in my body was on fire as I felt him pierce my skin and sink into the tender flesh at the base of my neck. I threw my head back and held him close to me, a fistful of his hair in my grip. His hand was between my legs, fingers inside me, making me reach for a climax, while his mouth brought something close to agony, but it was nothing I wanted to stop. I surrendered all of myself to him. His mouth kept pace with his hand, and when he felt my insides tighten around his fingers, he bit harder into my neck. The world went blurry, and I was afraid that I was going to die; but in the moment, it seemed better to let this wild passion be the wave I would ride out of this world and into the next one. Even if all were darkness after this, it did not matter, for what could compare?

He let me writhe under his touch until the final shudder, when my body went limp in his arms. “Ah, Mina, the taste of you,” he said, holding me to his chest and stroking my hair.

We lay by the blazing hearth for a while, until the cold of the stone beneath us seeped through his cloak and into my bones, and I began to feel the pain from the wound in my neck. It throbbed and burned, competing in intensity with the heat of the flames of the fire. Drops of my blood were on his shirt.

“I know that it hurts you. Close the wound,” he said.

I put my hand over it and felt the torn flesh and the lazy ooze of blood.

You know how to do it. You have done it before.

Yes, but how? How to unite the magical woman I was in the past with the ordinary Mina in this body-this drained, throbbing, bleeding, and very human body? It seemed impossible.

He placed a fingertip on my forehead at the temple and made a tiny circle, soothing me. I closed my eyes, until the dark emptiness behind my lids was replaced with a mental image of the wound. Words long forgotten, words stifled for centuries, rose from their grave and sounded in my mind: Divine Lady, I am parched with thirst for your power. Bring me to the Lake of Recollection, where I can drink its cool waters and recall my source. Let me bathe in the Lake of Memory, so that I may remember all that you are, and all that I am.

My hands began to heat and electrify, and I placed the left one over the wound. Power of the Raven, be mine! Take my pain, close my wound, and let it offend me no more.

The heat from my hand met the burning sensation in the wound, and it felt as if I were setting myself on fire. My hand seared the lesion, and I did not know if I was further injuring myself or not. But some knowing inside me made me keep my hand over the gash. In my mind’s eye, my flesh bubbled and frothed, like something that rose to the top in a boiling kettle. It was more painful than the original insult to my tissue, and I was tempted to stop before I seared my neck. Maybe my former powers were forever lost to me.

Do not stop now. Trust.

In time the pain began to subside, and my hands went from scorching hot to warm. I put my finger where the wound had been, but it was gone and the area was smooth. I searched for evidence of the gash, but the skin on my neck and throat was flawlessly intact.

I sat up, and he sat with me, arms around me. We said nothing for a long while but simply held each other. I stared into the flames as they resurrected images and memories from my first days with him in this very room so many lifetimes ago. There is no explanation for love; no spoken words compare with its silent exhilaration. If that was true of the ordinary love between two mortals-if love is ever ordinary-then it was truer of a love that has contorted itself into different bodies in different eras over the centuries.

Finally, I had to ask, “How was it that you, a mortal, lived on eternally, and I, a daughter of the Sidhe, died a mortal death?”

“It was your choice,” he said, looking away from me. “I could not force you to choose eternal life, though I did try.”

“What would make me choose a life away from you, my love? I cannot imagine it.”

“My love,” he said, repeating my words. “I have waited a very long time to hear it roll from your lips again so effortlessly.” Then his expression turned to sadness. “The rest of that story is not a happy one,” he said.

“Then I do not want to hear it,” I said. “Let us forget the past-all our pasts, whatever they were-and let us bind to each other again in the here and now, and let us make it forever. I never want to be apart from you again.”

I expected a declaration of love, but he put two fingers on the pulse in my wrist, and then on my neck. “How do you feel? Are you dizzy or nauseous?”

No, I am not sick, I am exhilarated and on fire with love for you, and I want to drink from you and be with you forever.

“Yes, I know that,” he said dispassionately. “But I must gauge your physical response to what has happened. It is the rare human who could experience both returning to a past event and losing blood at the same time without severely weakening the body.”

“Did we actually go back in time?” I had experienced the return to the past with every physical sensation, but that was the way in dreams too.

He opened his hand, palm up. “The past is right here for those who know how to access it. Yes, we returned to it together. It was not a dream or hallucination, and that is why I could not restrain myself. When you opened yourself to me, the veil dropped, and we were caught between the two worlds. When we returned to the present time, I was still taking your blood, and I could not stop. I did not intend for that to happen, but our desire for each other was too intense. We must be certain that I did no harm.”

“How could you think that you have done me harm? You have opened up the world to me. You asked me to remember who I am, and who we are together, and now I do remember. Nothing else matters now.”

“Let us go back to the castle,” he said. “It is crucial that you stay warm and rest.”

I want to take your blood into my veins. I want to be your blood lover and live with you forever.

“This moment is seven hundred years in the making, Mina. We must be very careful. You are still quite mortal.”

Suddenly, an overpowering hunger struck me. I felt restless to the core. My legs and arms began to quiver, and a void opened up inside me that I had to fill or go mad. I did not know what I desired, what nourishment could