Disclaimers:  I'm not even gonna try to say who "Dracula" actually belongs to, but the concept, characters and setting of  Dracula 2000 are property of Wes Craven, Dimension Films, and some other folks.  Original story herein is property of the author.

Author's Note:   This reverie takes place during the scene showing Dracula perched above Bourbon Street.  My only excuse is that Gerard Butler's version of Dracula really  is impossible to resist; he started talking and all I could do was write it down while doing my best not to swoon . . . or drool.  So, that having been said -- many kudos to Gerard.  It takes talent to make a bad guy like Drac inspire a scene like this . . . and it takes true onscreen charisma (and beauty) to make a scene like his passage through the music store draw comments from myself and my friend, both female and avid movie hecklers, not of "Oh, come on!" but of "Ohhh, definitely!"  ;)

Shadows of Death

© 2001, Grace Macy

I have known her since her birth . . . and since long before that.  I knew her before she ever had a name, before her form ever came into being in the womb of my enemy's wife.  She has been with me for far, far longer than she knows.  Perhaps even longer than I myself can fathom.

She is more than she knows, more than she will allow herself to believe.  She is the light to my darkness, searing in her purity, terrible in her innocence.  She is my mate, my other half; my sister, my daughter; my savior, my tormentor.  Hers is the name I whisper in the deep recesses of my mind when my body can no longer speak.  Hers is the face I see in dreams beyond my control.

We are joined by blood, by pain, by a curse that has lasted for millennia and may well last into eternity.  I have known this many times over the long centuries, always finding her, recognizing her in some distant, buried part of what remains of my soul.  Always finding her. . . always losing her.  The last time was because of Van Helsing.  Irony, or perhaps proof that our God finds humor in all things, that he is the one who delivered her to me again more than a century later.

Mina.

Mary.

I lay in darkness, tormented by the constant agony of unrelieved hunger, when she was conceived.  If Van Helsing had allowed me even the meager light of the coffin's interior . . . but he didn't.  He placed a heavy shield over my head, to protect those who came to bear away the leeches that kept me weak.  Van Helsing knew my power.  He has always known -- and always respected and feared it, both in this life and many others.  Oh yes, we have been enemies for a very long time, he and I.  And now, supreme, twisted irony, it is my enemy's child who is my love.

I knew when life came into her body, when her soul entered her as yet unborn form.  I knew, but I did not know who she was.  I did not realize, weak and dreaming as I was.  It was not until a long time afterwards, when she was grown and I was released from my prison, that I realized fully the import of those dreams.  Perhaps that is why I love her so, now.  This time I have been bound to her from the start, and not known who she was until much later.  Instead, all I saw, all I felt, was youth, spirit, laughter and innocence.  Beauty in all its forms.

Oh, and she  was always beautiful.  I could feel her in my mind, see her in those half-lit dreams.  She confused me, awed me . . .  terrified me.  As I know I confused, awed and terrified her.  When she was a child she did not know to feel that fear.  She took me with her in dreams of sunlit fields and horses, rainbows and unicorns, and turned the dark edges of my own dreams and memories aside.  I thought at first that this was a torment sent by the Creator, but I grew to love those dreams, those adventures when that glorious dark-haired child would laugh and place her hand in mine.  She was my freedom.  She kept me sane.

But as she grew, as she learned of the darkness in the world, even though it was limited to the fears of any normal child, my own darkness began to creep into her dreams.  It was at those times that I began to hate what I knew I had become -- what I had chosen and been cursed to become all those very many years ago.

The sunlit fields of her dreams slowly vanished, replaced by dark hallways that I knew came from my own mind.  Laughter became suspicion, smiles became tears of horror as she began to see the monstrous mask my starved face had become.  She ran from me when before she had invited me to play.  She was too old now to see me as my true, human form.  She saw now with the eyes of an adult, with the eyes given to her by her hunting father, and by her Catholic mother.  And it was those times that I stopped hating myself and returned to hating Van Helsing.

She shut me out as best she could.  She locked the doors of her mind against me, so that it was only when the hunger rose and screamed in my mind that I broke through to her dreams.   I was terrible then, madness threatening, so that I remember dreaming of going for her throat.  I could hear her screams, her pleas, could feel her terror.  I began to forget the dreams of her childhood.  I began to float in the darkness.  But every once in a very great while, the doors of her mind would open to me of their own accord and the light would stream in.  I can count the number of times she saw my human face then on one hand.  But she did see, and every once in a while I could see through her eyes.  Those moments were brief, but they managed to re-awaken my heart so that the darkness of my mind was not so complete.

I watched the funeral of her mother.  I watched her as she made love for the first time.  I saw the tears that fell silently down her cheeks when she allowed herself to wonder where her father truly was.  And she would see me, as she did when I awoke on that airplane.  Brief, always brief, but those times she was not quite so afraid.  And in those times, without ever realizing it, she saved my sanity again.

And now I am awake, released once again into the world.  Her world.  I had thought for a while that the dreams of her were just that -- dreams. Strange hallucinations.  Terrible visions that taunted me, saved me, enchanted and drew me.  And then, as I stood in the cabin of the airplane, glutted with fresh blood, sated for the first time in centuries, I turned and saw her.  Truly a vision this time, but I knew her.  Oh, I knew her.  And I knew that if I was awake and yet seeing her, then that meant she existed in this world to which I had awakened.

I remember stepping towards her, finding myself standing in the plane and yet somehow also standing in a sunlit bedroom.  And she was so close . . . so wonderfully, incredibly, irresistably close.  I could see her, feel her warmth, smell the sweet scent of her as I leaned in and breathed deeply. . . .  She was real.  Real!

And she was terrified of me.

I tried to reach her.  I tried to show her with my eyes that I was no threat to her, would never hurt her -- not  her -- but the vision was interrupted, banished by the intrusion of another woman into the space my form occupied in her room.  I found myself back in the airplane again, unable to recall the vision despite all my power.  So I turned my attention to other things.  More practical things, like 'convincing' the pilot to turn the strange craft in the direction I knew, in my bones, that I needed to go to find her.

Now I am here, in this strange city, with its fascination for reveling in sin.  It awes me, amuses me, delights me no end, that the world has come to this.  What need have they to fear my darkness when they have done this on their own?  A hundred years ago, they never would have dreamt of this, but now . . . now this world is truly mine.  And soon, soon she will be mine as well.

I have not found her yet, but I know where to look.  The streets below me are crowded with revelers, the scent and feel of their blood, their arousal, their need, pounding through me.  It fills me with power, with energy.  I let it, draw it in and focus on it, following the threads of minds and pulses until I find the one I seek.  I know where to find her, now.

I am coming, my love.  My twin.  My destiny.

My Mary.

End

Author's Note, Part B:  By the way: a) New Orleans is  much more crowded, and  not that easy to get around, during Mardi Gras; and b) the  Virgin music store does not have that video screen -- and even if it did, they would never play a video like that in public, Mardi Gras or no.  That section is much more family-oriented, and even New Orleans has laws about public decency.  (People on Bourbon Street just tend to ignore them. <g>)

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