The hunger had grown unbearable.Dracula had endured famine before—wars where his soldiers gnawed bark from trees, winters where peasants boiled leather for broth. But this was worse. The beast inside him raged like a storm at sea, tossing his human half like a splintered ship. He could hear Andrei’s heartbeat through stone walls, feel its pulse tugging at him wherever the scholar wandered.
For nights, he avoided him, retreating to the deepest crypts of the castle. There, among mouldering coffins and bones of those long forgotten, he fought himself. He dug his nails into his own flesh, tasting his blood upon his tongue, but it gave no satisfaction. Only human blood quenched the fire, and the fire now roared.
Still, the man clung on. He remembered Elisabeta—her voice, her touch. If he succumbed, if he killed Andrei, he would destroy the fragile possibility of being more than beast. Yet the beast whispered poison: He is not her. He is only mortal flesh. Take him. You deserve it.
On the fourth night, the storm inside him broke.
Andrei sat in the library, bent over a manuscript, when Dracula entered without a sound. His eyes burned red, his lips drawn back to reveal fangs sharp as daggers. He loomed in silence, a predator barely restrained.
Andrei looked up, startled. The candlelight flickered across the Count’s face, painting it half-angel, half-demon. He rose slowly, his voice low but steady. “You have not fed,” he said. “I can see it in you.”
Dracula’s breath hissed through clenched teeth. “You should flee.”
“And yet you would catch me.”
The honesty of it stilled them both. For a moment, only the crackle of the fire and the rush of Dracula’s thirst filled the room.
Andrei took a step closer, astonishingly. “If you must,” he whispered, “then take it. Better me, willingly given, than another who knows only terror.”
The beast howled in triumph. Here was permission, the door unbarred. Dracula’s hands trembled as he reached for him, fingers brushing the scholar’s throat where the pulse leapt beneath thin skin. He could already taste it, already feel the fire quenching—
But then he saw his own reflection. Not in glass, for mirrors betrayed him, but in Andrei’s eyes. Not monster. Not prince. Both. And he realised: to take this life was to kill the very part of himself that had survived all these centuries. The part still capable of being human.
With a guttural cry, he flung himself backward, striking the wall hard enough to crack the stone. His fangs glistened with unshed hunger, but he did not strike.
Andrei exhaled shakily, hand pressed to his throat, but his gaze held no hatred. Only sorrow. “You are stronger than your curse, my lord. Stronger than you believe.”
Dracula slumped to his knees, his chest heaving though it did not breathe. Tears—rare, burning, unwanted—pricked his eyes. For the first time in centuries, Count Dracula wept.
And in those tears, the beast screamed.
Source: Some or all of the content was generated using an AI language model
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