Quickfic

[smokingboot]

I don't do much in the way of fanfic, so if there are rules, I don't know them. Here's something based on Dracula and Mina.



'Did I not warn you?'

The voice from out of the mirror was familiar though foreign. It occurred to her that she missed it more than she ever admitted to Jonathan or herself. Knowing how pointless the mirror was, she turned to face her visitor. He was more beautiful than she recalled, more even than when she was caught in his glamour. No more white hair or bent nails, no; that was all hers. He looked her up and down, a kindness in his gaze that would have been insufferable once.

"And this you chose.'

'This I chose. Why are you here?'

He paused.

'Jonathan gone, your sons...' his eyes strayed to the telegrams tucked behind a book on her mantelpiece. 'I am sorry. If a promise can comfort you, know that your daughter and your grandchildren live in safety from my kind, if not from the...' she could feel him search for words, 'the follies of men.'

Mina bowed her head, momentarily. 'This new century has been far more cruel to me than you ever were, Sir.'
Silence between them for a moment. She laughed to break it; terror of the East, horror of the west, how coy he has become! Or maybe it is we humans who have changed. Maybe he lacks language for what we do.

'Do you know you are dying, my love?'

She faltered. 'I am certainly not well.'

'I can hear it in your heartbeat, in the slowing of your blood, the faintness of your pulse. I can smell it in the air around you, upon you, more rank than ever my body was when close to yours. Do you remember the boom of your heart echoing in the dark so long ago? I remember, I who hold nothing. I remember.'

'You are come to offer me relief.'

'Or new life.'

Her eyes grew round as she looked at him, the freshness of him, his lips so red, the vitality of muscle and strength beside the white paper frailty of her skin flashed with threads of blue. He has dined within the hour, she realised, or these veins would be too tempting. Time is, after all, nothing. We do not change.

'Are you ready, beloved, for Heaven? Ready to see Lucy again and Jonathan and all of them, all the lost? Are you ready to die?'

She did not answer.

'Ah, it is well that you do not toy with me or lie.'

'You would not know if I did lie. You have grown young.' Her smile was wry.

He smiled too with those sharp white teeth. 'Always so clever, my Mina! But I do not think you are ready. I think the coming of death now is a travesty to you. I think you rebel, that the waste of it angers you.'

'If it is my fate...'

'Fate!' He laughed, the merriment of a strong young man. 'We are the end of fate. We always were. Come here my beloved, drink and find life again, youth again. Come at last.'

When the maid arrived with breakfast, she was mystified to find the room empty. Other servants swore the old lady had not gone through the front or back doors that night, and all agreed she could no more climb out the window than fly like a bat. At first kidnap was suspected though it seemed odd that of all the valuables worth taking, only the telegrams on the mantle had gone. Despite the furore and subsequent reward, Mrs Harker was never found. The police pursued other cases, the press other stories, and even Lord Holmwood's investigators gave up the search. Only now and then her daughter would think of her, when the children were asleep and all seemed still save a moments breeze and a sunset that crimsoned the moon.


P.S. I know Lord Holmwood should be Lord Godalming, but like the original reference.