Vlad Tepes Dracula stood atop a building in the city of Boston, the barely born and fledgling city of the new nation that had made such a noise upon its arrival. The youth was reflected in the optimistic industry and mindsets of those who lived here.
Humans were meant to build. To aspire. To reach for the sun.
And he had taken it away from them. Snatched it from the sky and pitched the city into the night.
He reached his arms out at his sides and felt his darkness stretch. He would devour the very metropolis like he would take a life. His nightmare, now released, would spread through the Earth and air like a plague.
He had tried to warn Maxine. He had tried to warn the hunters themselves. But no one ever listened. No one could fathom what it was that dwelled inside his soul.
I am not a vampire. I am far more, and far worse, than that. Within me beats the black heart of all that would splinter bone and pick their teeth with the remains.
I am the river spring from which flows all cruelty on this Earth.
And it was cruelty that made me.
He wondered if those who cursed him so long ago could have even fathomed what they had wrought upon the living. Their faces were lost to him, as were the details of the event itself. He understood only in vague terms as to the why, the when, and the how it had all come to pass. It did not matter. It did not change the simple fact that he was death incarnate.
Yet never allowed to die.
He could bestow that gift upon others, and he did it with both joy and disgust. It mattered not—it did not change the hunger that boiled over in him. The hunger that could change the world around him to the whim of his dark dreams.
The crimson moon had usurped the sun, and with it came his creatures. Demons and monsters he had created over the course of his long “life.” Beasts of warped and mutilated forms that put the ghouls to shame for their lack of creativity.
And the city would know such pain because of the actions of hunters who sought to save it. The actions of one hunter in particular.
Alfonzo Van Helsing had come for revenge. It blinded him to the deal that any sane man would have taken. Any man whose mind was not clouded by hatred would have seen it a bargain to spare the life of a city in return for a single mortal woman.
A woman who wanted to be at his side.
That was…until he soaked the ground in blood. Now, all bets were off.
He watched in idle fascination as a few of his creatures tackled a man on his horse on the street below. The monsters took both rider and steed to the ground. They screamed in agony as teeth tore into flesh and began to rend them asunder without any care for their suffering.
He supposed that was not true. His creatures cared very much for the suffering of their victims—they enjoyed it greatly.
As for himself?
Watching the gore play out beneath him?
He felt nothing at all.
Death came to the city of Boston on crimson wings. The sun had been plucked from the sky and replaced by a moon the color of blood, shrouding the city in its unnatural light.
But that was not what horrified her the most. It was that the sounds of birds, once happily chirping in the trees or soaring on summer air…had been replaced by screams. The sounds of mortal souls caught in terror and pain joined with a chorus of inhuman howls that joyfully called out their bloody victories.
Death had come on crimson wings, and it had a name—Vlad Tepes Dracula.
But Maxine suspected she remained largely to blame.
She pressed her back to the wall of her living room, shivering uncontrollably. A bone-deep chill had taken the summer breeze from the air and was already quickly seeping into her home like a poison. She could feel it beneath the surface of the ground and sense it all around her. A curse had been unleashed. A plague she had thought she had understood. But oh, she had been very wrong. The vampire had asked her if she could eat her steak and kill the cow. If she could face down the hypocrisy of her ignorance and still embrace him.
She thought she had known the answer. And now she knew had been mistaken.