Immortality

***
Eleven

He knew that he was dreaming. He knew because he'd gone to sleep in that cheap bed in Rome and now that he had ostensibly woken, he was lying fully dressed on the floor of the thick, dark wood. The only problem was the fact that it felt so very real; he could feel the contours of the ground beneath him, he could smell the earth and the fresh scent of the pine trees. And it was so cold, chilling him right through in spite of his thick black clothing and the fact that there seemed to be absolutely no wind.

Slowly, he rose to his feet, using the tree to his side for support. The bark felt rough against his palms, grating at his skin, so he pulled his thick leather gloves from his pockets and tugged them on. Then he felt for his guns, his blades, and found they weren't there. He scanned the ground, illuminated with almost perfect clarity by the huge full moon that hung overhead, for his crossbow; he didn't find it. Just because this was a dream, that didn't mean to say that he wouldn't want to defend himself if he were attacked, and he had no weapons. Even for a dream, that was not a particularly good sign.

He began to walk. Perhaps he should have stayed where he had woken and let the dream come there to him, but his limbs felt curiously stiff as if he had been lying there for hours, completely unmoving, and he thought that walking might just help. He walked briskly, leaves rustling and twigs cracking beneath his feet, but he had decided that since this was a dream, stealth was of a rather low priority. He had a feeling that in dreams there was nothing you could do to change their course, no matter the tivetive wisdom or folly of the actions taken. So he walked briskly, the branches catching at his shoulders and the hand before his face, almost knocking the hat from his head.

Soon, he came to a clearing. At least he assumed that it was soon, but when he though back over his steps since waking at the foot of that great pine tree, there seemed to be more in his memory than 'soon' would actually warrant. His head started to throb and he decided that such questions as the warping of time while unconscious were best left to the philosophers of the world. Particularly ones who weren't sleeping, or standing in a small clearing in a wood that existed solely in their mind.

The moonlight was so bright now that there were no tall trees to shade him from it that it took a moment for his eyes to adjust. He peered around, tilting back his har a r a better view, and as his vision cleared the dark, looming shape there in the very centre of the clearing cameo sho sharp focus. It was a stake perhaps twice the height of an average man, driven down deep into the ground, and from what he could see there was someone tied to it, around at the other side. That sense of dread with which he had woken so frequently of late, welled up inside him like some dreadful, intimate acquaintance. He knew that there was some part of him knew already what he was to find. He stepped closer. He rounded the stake, and looked.

She was wearing a red dress, a vivid, horrific blood red against her pale skin under the bright white light of the moon. She had on white satin gloves that reached up to her elbows, her wrists tied together with thick rope above her head. She was wearing a mask, metallic, shining almost blindingly and obscuring half of her pale face; still he knew it was her.

"Anna," he said.

Her lips parted as if she was about to speak, but all that he heard was a sigh. Then she looked at him, the mask unable to hide her eyes. She didn't need to say a word; he knew that she was pleading.

He stepped forward quickly and tugged at the ropes, but the knots held fast. He was standing so close to her that they were almost touching and he could feel her breath against his throat. It was cold, like a breath of winter wind, and made him shudder at the faintest touch on his skin. It was wrong; her breath should have been warm, like mist in the freezing air, but he had no time to dwell on the reason for it. The calm night was split by a shriek, and a batting of huge wings, and he knew that the vampires were coming.

There nothnothing he could do. The knots in the rope that held Anna there would not yield to him, and he could not leave her. The shrieking was horrible, ringing in his ears, and grew closer. And then there they were, Dracula's three monstrous brides, who pushed him away and clawed at Anna's too-pale flesh. She didn't scream. She didn't make a sound. And he could not move.

He was being held, his shoulder clasped in a vice-like grip as he stood there and watched as the brides he knew were dead devoured the woman whose body he'd burnt himself. Their mouths were stained with blood - her blood. Somehow he knew that his would never touch their lips; he was held there then by Dracula, he knew it, *felt* it, and Dracula would not let the women have him.

Anna hung dead at the stake; Dracula's three brides were women again ant tht those creatures, at least in form, and they lapped at the wounds they had torn in her arms, in her throat. Their eyes, though, were on him. They were watching.

Dracula pulled off his hat and tossed it to the ground. The wind was rising rapidly around them, whirling through the trees, and it caught at Gabriel's hair, whipping it about his face. A fork of lightning split the sky and as the thunder cracked, the heavens spilt forth a gush of icy rain as though wounded. In just seconds he was soaked and shivering, his sodden hair thrashing at his face as Dracula's hands kept him there, unmoving. The moon seemed dark. Through the shuddering hiss of the rain he heard the brides' laughter, and then they were gone.

He felt himself turning, as though the world had spun on its axis beneath him, and in the moment of a lightning flash he struck out for Dracula's face. He felt his wrist caught, the bones grinding together in the pressure of Dracula's grasp. He looked up, bringing his gaze up from the ground into Dracula's dark, shining eyes. For a second or longer they seemed devoid of white, of iris even, just a mass of deep, soulless obsidian. And then Dracula moved in closer.

He struggled against him, but only at first. Soon he felt too weak, feeling every second, every drop of his life spilling steadily from him. He had imagined it would be some kind of frenzy, with a beating of his heart that he would hear in his ears as he felt it in his veins, but that was not the case at all; in the midst of the biting rain and the swirl or wind, he felt he was the calm eye of the storm. As Dracula held him, his hands in his hair and his mouth at his throat, all he felt was warmth despite the bitter cold. It was a perfect, windswept moment.

And as he died, he woke.

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