Chapter 9

In stories, sorrow was often joined with rain.

But Dracula had always been a different kind of man – and so, his death was announced by the return of the clearest skies that Mina Murray had ever seen. The stars twinkled, and she swore she could see the red gleam of Mars with her vampiric sharp senses, and the only sound that rose above the ruins that had once been the city of Timisora was a single keening wail, one that rose and fell and rose again, and pierced her to her heart.

The human civilians had emerged from the factory, following the orders that they had been given before the battle to collect up every scrap of Martian metal and machinery. They had several new flying machines to work with, and the ruin of nine tripods, and dozens of heat rays that had been retrieved in varying degrees of functionality. But as they moved in the dimness with their lanterns in their hands, casting jagged shadows and jouncing puddles of orange-white light ... they worked in silence and they did not cheer, nor celebrate.

They simply worked on, their heads bowed, their shoulders tightened against that keening.

Verona was the one who was crying the loudest. Her two other wives had both been with Dracula for centuries, and they were cradling one another, pressing their heads down, their bodies together, shaking and trembling as they tried to find some kind of sign that he had been here at all. Mina didn’t know if she could imagine anything as horrid as this ... as the knowledge that he had died, as the unmistakable fact of it. They had each seen him, even Aleera (half blind with his own agonies and wounds) had watched the stake go through his chest and his body sag away into ash.

But there was no solidity to that fact, nothing that they could ground themselves on. No corpse to cling too. No ashes to place in an urn. Nothing to remember Dracula by, save for memories that felt as hollow as the ruined buildings around them.

Lucy’s head lay in her lap, her mouth closed around Mina’s wrist. She drank, gently, as Mina tried to focus upon the alchemical transformation going on within her body as she turned her blood into the album vitae – it had the same healing properties when imbibed by a vampire as it did on a human being. But, like with a human, she had to make sure to purify it properly, so that Lucy would not be blood bound to her.

Not that I’d have an easy time telling the difference, huh? Mina thought.

Each drink that Lucy took was ragged and careful. She had been younger than Aleera, and when the bizarre secondary weapon that had ... somehow stripped their defenses and laid them bare before the heat ray, Lucy had been far worse burned. Every drink clearly caused her pain, and her plaintive mental thought was more like a sensation than words – a throbbing ache in the back of Mina’s own throat, an echo of the agony that Lucy had to be going through. So, Mina caressed her hair with her free hand and whispered, softly. “Shh, shh, it’ll be okay. It’ll be okay.”

But the question hung in the air: Would it?

Dracula was dead.

Their greatest hope had been killed in a single instant – slain by a tripod and a device they didn’t even begin to understand.

Mina looked over at the wives, who continued their crying, then at the human laborers. They were being assisted here and there – she could see Jonathan, his arms trembling, holding up some rubble so that they could get at materials buried underneath. Everyone was mutely following the plan that Dracula had left behind ... but everything beyond the next few hours was nothing more than a kind of ... hazy possibility.

Mina bit her lower lip, then looked down at Lucy. Her skin had turned from the horrid red mass that it had been to something more pinkish and smooth. Her eyebrows and her golden locks were gone, leaving her looking more like a shaved egg, her face waxy and overly smooth. Her eyes closed and she pushed Mina’s wrist away with a soft ‘mew’ noise, clearly unable to drink another drop. Mina nodded, then snapped her finger and gestured to Jonathan. He came to her side, jogging over as if he was some mortal late for the underground train.

“Yes?” He asked.

“Do we have enough native soil to give her a proper coffin to sleep in? She’s too hurt to shrink...” Mina asked.

Jonathan’s eyes went a bit hazy, consulting their supplies. “ ... y ... es ... yes, I can get that together.”

As he jogged off again, several other humans came over. They were all men, rough and tough looking, and one of them – a tall fellow with a bushy mustache that Mina barely recognized – said: “Miss Murray, we’ve managed to get some of the pieces from the flying machine but ... the ... the, ah, the queer metal that tries to fly? What should we be doing with that?”

“Keep it where it is,” Mina said, nodding. “In fact, throw chains over it! Weight it down if you can and bolt those chains to the ground with as much force as you can.” The men nodded, then hurried off. She called after them. “Find George and Dr. Elphinstone, they’re both strong enough.”

And, like that, Mina found herself making a dozen or so small decisions. Where to place what. What to begin working on next. Who got to drink from what. Tiny things, easy things. But each time she answered the question to the best of her knowledge, she glanced back over her shoulder, half expecting Verona or Aleera or Marishka to emerge from their grief and to take over. They were the oldest. They were the vampires who knew best what was going on and what to do ... right? But instead, dawn broke and she had seen Lucy to her coffin, gathered up the tripod components, and started shifts in the factory to begin the chemical work of producing gunpowder, using the simplest expedient of magic.

Dracula had explained it to her, on the way to the city: All chemistry is simply the adding and removing and combining of certain elements. The complexity came in the fact that those elements were all foolish and didn’t know much beyond what they did naturally – for instance, gold naturally refused to blend with most other chemicals, making it an excellent insulator. The same was true of glass, being resistant to acids. They did not choose to do any of those things, it was just how they worked. But vampires had an advantage. When they drank blood, they could break that blood down, then recreate it within themselves into the album vitae and album noctis.

All well and good for blood, but we need saltpeter and sulfur and charcoal ... in the right mixtures, too. And we can’t do that in our bellies!

Ah, Dracula had said. And yet, has a vampire ever tried? He had had the most whimsical smirk on his features. You might have noticed, blood tastes quite good...

“This is foul,” George groaned as he watched Mina pinch her nose and drink down the bubbling concoction made of soaps, industrial solvents and other foul liquids found in the ruins that had contained any hint of the chemicals they needed. “How will this not ... kill...”

Mina coughed and wheezed. Her eyes brimmed with tears. Her throat did not ache nor burn, and her belly didn’t feel as if it was contracting. She had none of the normal symptoms one might have considered, if you normally drank that amount of rat poison. Instead, she simply had to contend with the taste and an ancient, atavistic urge to vomit. For the first time, she was deeply regretful of her vampiric status. She spat, tried to clear her tongue, then resolved to never do this again if she could. But George, watching from the side lines, whispered. “Well, I’ll be damned.”

“I mean, it can’t kill her because we’re already dead,” Sharon said, cheerfully. “Do you need some blood to wash that down?”

“No, thank you, Sharon,” Mina said, her voice as prim and polite as possible – the focus on her diction helped to distract her from the taste on the back of her throat. “Blood is simply another element that I shall have to focus upon.” She closed her eyes, then bit her lip. She felt the concoction within her and realized, immediately ... that ... while it was significantly more complex than a simple drought of blood, it was also considerably simpler at the same time. Blood was simply blood ... except that, in a way, it was not.

“That makes no sense,” Mina muttered.

“I didn’t say anything,” George said, chuckling.

“No, I ... trying to make sense of myself,” Mina said, smiling and opening on eye to a sliver. She could see, beyond the two others, the factory floor where men and women worked on metal presses. Canisters that would become explosive charges were being stacked up – but currently were as harmful as shot puts. She closed her eye again. “I can feel each chemical – on their own, each one is nothing complex, not compared to blood. Which is odd, but ... I think blood is more than simply blood...” She trailed off, then bit her lower lip. “Now ... let us...” She cocked her head to the side. “Wait, damn! Damn!”

“What?” Sharon asked.

“All vampires know how to make vitae – but I have no idea what proportion gunpowder is-”

“Ah, I know how to fix that,” George said. He reached into his pockets, then drew a revolver. “Not really a useful tool now that I’ve become a ... well, but, I kept it and...” He popped it open, drew a bullet, then cracked it open. “Tongue out, my dear.”

Mina snorted. “I will need to wash this down with something very pleasant afterwards...”

“I’d offer, but you are engaged, are you not?” George gave her an impish little grin. “And, what is more, that...” He tapped the bullet and a tingle of gunpowder slid along her tongue. She closed her eyes, tasting it. “That Antoni fellow is also interested, is he not?”

Mina flushed and tried to put the idea of Jonathan or Antoni or Lucy ... or even George and Sharon out of her mind. Instead, she felt the chemicals within her gut, tasted the gunpowder on her tongue and focused and tried to juggle the mixture about and- she coughed, blinking as she felt a sudden weight in her belly. It had been so easy, so effortlessly simple, that she found herself rather wrongfooted. She put her hand on her stomach, feeling herself through her white shift, and tried to understand why.

Blood is not merely blood, she thought. It is part of a person. We take that part, then we shape it – but shaping a person is hard. Chemicals are just chemicals. They have no self that we must work with!

She closed her eyes and attempted to not look revolting as she collected ... and then...

Coughed up a thick handful of compacted gunpowder.

It rested in her palm and Mina panted, heavily. “Easy. But ... disgusting.”

“I’m just a farmer, but...” Sharon hooked her fangs on her lower lip, frowning slightly. “Don’t we need significantly more than that? Aren’t there whole factories that make gunpowder, by the ton? Not by handfuls?”

Mina rubbed her palm against her face, setting the gunpowder down before her. “Knowing I can do it, it just is a matter of doing it more,” she said, nodding. “And...” She blushed. “I must relieve myself of the excess...” She winced at the very unpleasant mental thought – she had foregone several biological functions and the idea of using them once more was rather unsettling to Mina.

“Ah, quite,” George said, his cheeks flushing. “But it seems a mite of a waste of a vampire to make them into a ... gunpowder cow.”

“Well, we can make more than gunpowder,” Mina said, standing and wincing. “If we can make any kind of chemical mixture within us, it’s entirely plausible we can make better explosives, right? Stronger, faster burning, more easily transported?” She brushed dust from her shift.

“Possibly,” George murmured.

“There’s still the issue of making more,” Mina admitted, rubbing her throat. “I’d hate to drink and eat the amount of stuff that we’d have too-”

“Don’t.”

George and her looked at Sharon, who was standing up herself. The Jewish vampire began to pace. “I’m a farmer – I never raised cattle, but I did have goats and I know that goats make milk – and I know that cows make milk, and that both can make more milk than humans can. Because they’re bigger, right? And I know for a fact that you can become a wolf. And ... Dracula...” Her face fell, and she crossed her arms over her chest. “And Dracula became a...”

“A dragon,” George said.

“Yes ... I still can hardly believe it.” Sharon looked down at her feet. Then she shook her head. “So, you can become the gunpowder cow.”

Mina nodded, slowly. “During morning, noon and dusk, we can only become hunters and predators – bats, wolves, and such. But at night...” She grinned, slowly. “We-”

“You!”

Mina almost dropped her gunpowder – and then she actually did as Verona stormed into the room. The eldest wife of Dracula was still dressed in the tatters of what she had worn to battle, her cheeks streaked with red lines from her tears. She grabbed onto Mina, then lifted her upwards and then smashed her into the concrete wall behind her – the entire fortress factory rocking with the impact. Mina wheezed, the air forced from her lungs as Verona closed her hand around her throat and squeezed, growling to her. “You let him die and you think you can take over!?”

Mina grabbed at her wrist, while Sharon and George sprang forward, putting their hands to Verona’s shoulders.

“She did no such thing!” George said.

“She hasn’t taken over!” Sharon snapped.

Mina dragged Verona’s hand away – just enough – and then brought her knee up. Verona, clearly not expecting usch an attack, took the blow. She couldn’t phase away from another vampire, and the impact was enough to send her stumbling backwards. George and Sharon both gaped, releasing her, while Mina brushed her hair back with her hand, then stepped up towards Verona. She felt as if the sorrow and confusion of earlier today had transmuted, like the saltpeter and sulfur in her belly turning into gunpowder, into rage. She grabbed onto Verona’s hair, jerked her head back, and glared into her eyes.

“Yes. I. Have.” She hissed.

Verona’s eyes widened.

“Dracula is dead.” Mina said, her voice cutting. “He is dead, and there are Martians in London, and unless we stop them, they were blacken our skies for all eternity. Those are the facts, Verona. And while those facts remained true, when we needed direction most, you wept for hours and only emerged now – and rather than coming to me and talking, you throw out wild accusations. It was a battle, and I did my best, and sometimes that isn’t good enough. You didn’t destroy enough flying machines to stop the one that killed him. I didn’t smash the heat ray before he was slain. Lucy didn’t tie up the tripod in time to prevent her and Aleera from being targets. We all tried and we all failed ... a-and...”

She could see tears brimming. And she felt them in her own eyes. And Mina knew, now, to coax, now that Verona was at least listening. Her hand grew soft. She cupped the back of her head and she whispered. “And now we have eternity to grieve, Verona.” She leaned forward, pressing her forehead to hers. Her eyes closed. “Aleera told me once to think on eternity ... as part of my training. That is not a curse, Verona. You will have an eternity to remember Dracula, to keep him alive. All of us will. But that eternity only comes if we win...”

Verona sniffled. Her hands grabbed onto Mina’s hips, drawing her closer. She whispered, her voice choked. “I ... I can’t...” She breathed. “He can’t ... be gone.”

Mina chuckled, her voice choked. “He won’t be. So long as we’re here.” She paused, then snorted, opening one eye. She watched the ruby red tears dripping down Verona’s cheeks, then leaned in close. She kissed the line, breaking the clean flow of blood. She tasted warm and sweet. “For all we know, that wily bastard planned for just this eventuality ... maybe, centuries from now, we’ll find some way to bring him back, hidden among his castle’s ruins, and you and Marishka and Aleera will be there for him...”

Verona snorted.

“But ... we will only have that hope if we work together.” Mina cupped her cheek, turning her face upwards. This close, Verona’s beauty struck Mina as intensely as her physical blow had. Mina’s lips tingled and she leaned slowly in. Her lips pressed to Verona’s. Verona moaned, kissing her back, her tongue sliding into her mouth. Verona’s fingers gripped her hips and Mina’s laced through her hair – then she drew back, whispering huskily. “But ... be honest. Are you ready to lead us?”

Verona was quiet, her tongue sliding back between her lips. She sags. “No. I ... I can barely think of anything but ripping Martians apart. I can’t...” She gulped, then cut herself off as Mina slid her arms around her, drawing her in close and squeezing her.

“Shh, shhh,” she whispered. “It’s okay. You will get to rip as many of them apart as you can imagine.” Her eyes flashed as she glared past the door, into the factory, where the humans continued to work.

There, she could see Marishka and Aleera, both of them emerging from the shadows – clearly unwilling to actually stop their elder wife in her rampage, but each looking deeply relieved that the fighting had ended. Mina’s grip tightened and she squeezed Verona to her slender body.

“All of you will.”

Mina sat alone in her room in the fortress as the sun rose and sleep called to her. But she refused to become a mouse and slip into her allotment of native earth. Instead, her mind went over everything in the past twenty four hours. She could see the strange light that had pinned Dracula down. She could see the rebar she had thrown, sailing through the air, piercing through the heat ray ... but not in time. She could see Verona’s tear stroked face. She could see the men and women working to take in the rubble. And ahead of it all, she could see the map that Dracula had left of Europe – with Martian positions marked here and there ... and the massive object in London that Jonathan had described.

The Port. The means by which the Martians were going to use to conquer the entire world – not merely ravage Europe.

The black eyed people, humans who had been turned to the service of the Martians by their own queer powers.

Jonathan, jogging from place to place, still so like a mortal...

Jonathan, pinned in place by a heat ray, his skin-

She put her hands over her face.

First, we are to ... was her thought. First we are to ... attack? Defend? Retreat? Scout? First we are too...

I have no idea what I’m doing! She thought. I’m a bloody school mistress, not Duke Wellington. I don’t know how to lead an army, I don’t-

The door opened and she snapped her head up. Jonathan stood in the doorway, smiling thinly at her. By the dim light that shone along the corridor from the human quarter of the fortress, she could see just how incredibly handsome her fiance was – made even finer by his new condition. Even if she’d never admit that to him ... it seemed incredibly rude to mention how much better he looked with fangs and pointed ears. His eyes, though, were what made her feel her tension unknot. They were gentle and playful, as if they were back at his flat in London, and the idea of Martians was something amusing one would read about in Punch. He held in his hands a small tray, which had a pair of goblets on them.

“Some fresh blood for the lady of the fortress,” he said, holding the tray to her, and Mina took the goblet.

“Goblets? Seems a mite ... impersonal...” She said.

“You know, not all of us are as cavalier about this neck biting stuff as you are,” Jonathan said, chuckling as he took a seat beside her on the bed. He shook his head, his cheeks flushing. “I ... of course ... there are some things one gets used too faster.” He murmured, looking at her – then looking straight ahead once he realized that she had noticed him watching. Mina giggled into her cup as she drank the warm, fresh blood. Feeling it sliding down her throat made her toes curl and her eyes sparkle with pleasure – there was a certain kind of thrill to drinking this way.

Less...

Hmm...

No, it was that it was more selfish. Since she knew how much humans enjoyed the bite.

And I suppose I can have a little selfishness, as a treat, after drinking that awful concoction earlier, she thought as she sat up and thrust out her chest subtly, drawing her shift taut across her breasts. Jonathan’s cheeks began to flush a darker gray, despite his forward fixation.

“You mean the fact you are sitting beside me, while I am in my night clothes, and neither of us have chaperons?”

“Ah, well...” Jonathan tugged at his collar. “We were to be wed, before...”

Mina nodded. “Yes ... before.”

“ ... I still want to, you know?” he asked, quietly. “Even after all of this.”

Mina set her drink down. “I don’t know if it’d be worth it,” she muttered – and blinked, shocked that it had escaped her ... but then, with the first part out, the rest began to follow, streaming from her in a single long strand: “I have no idea what I’m doing, Jonathan! I ... Lucy already got so hurt, and Dracula got hurt, and that is with Dracula in charge – not me! Some ... some ... schoolmistress who died a virgin!” She blushed. “W-well, if you do not count ... me ... laying with Lucy, that is ... and since, well, she didn’t...” She trailed off.

Jonathan coughed, then adjusted his collar again. “I may not be ... seductive or powerful. I ... can’t even become a wolf.” He smiled, slightly. “In fact, my only skill is manage documents and facts and arguing before a court.” He placed his hand upon her bare shoulder, then squeezed. “But I also know that ... you ... are the strongest woman that I know, Mina. And you don’t need to know what you’re doing because ... no one does. We have generals. We have soldiers. But has ... even if the Iron Duke rose from his grave to sally forth in England’s name again, he’s led humans. But has he ever led vampires?”

She smiled, shyly. “No.”

“Has anyone ever led an army of vampires?”

Mina shook her head. “No.”

“Then, yes, being a general would help, it’d give you some ideas to start with. But you’d also be so ... stuffed with knowledge on how other armies work that you might miss openings.” He smiled. “Besides, knowing you’re unqualified is the first step to knowing when to listen to advice, or that’s what I think at least.” He blushed, then cupped her cheek, turning to face her. “And ... even if everything I say is just ... pablam and bunk ... at least I’m here to be with you to the end.”

Mina turned. She kissed his palm. Then she nibbled his skin, feeling the worries of the moment slipping away, inch by inch as she tasted his softness. He had the hand of a clerk – and Mina realized, she rather liked it. She looked up past his arm at his flushed face and into his averted eyes. She licked her lips, and that confidence that she had felt earlier today, when she had confronted Verona, came roaring back. And this time, there was only eagerness to buffet it.

“Look at me.”

His eyes flicked to her – and he blushed even harder.

“Do you like what you see, Mr. Harker?”

He nodded, mutely.

“I ... didn’t hear that...” Mina murmured.

Jonathan gulped. Then, huskily, he whispered. “Y ... Yes I do, Miss ... Murray.”

That was when she shoved him onto his back.

Jonathan’s arms spread wide and his eyes widened as she settled herself right onto his lap, her rump grinding against his bulge. The battle, even if it had been hours before, had been a close kiss with death and now? Now that caused her lusts to flare to blazing life, her cunt growing hot and wet and needy as she looked down into Jonathan’s eyes. She rocked her hips against him, and Jonathan panted, softly. “M-Mina...”

She grinned, then grabbed his wrists. Her hands guided his palms to her breasts and Jonathan gently, gently, squeezed her breasts through the thin film of her shift and his fingers found the hardness of her nipples. He held her as if she was made of cut glass, and Mina giggled, then laughed, then put her hands onto his hands and snarled, quietly. “Harder, Mr. Harker.” His eyes half closed and he groaned and she felt him throbbing through his pants against her rump. His fingers played her, and he still was a tad less forceful than Lucy when she was feeling playful – but even that increase was enough to coax a moan from her lips. Her fangs glittered as she threw her head back, trembling.

“Ah...” She murmured. “You like it when I give you orders, Mr. Harker?”

His cheeks burned and his fingers released her nipples. “W-Well, it ... no, I-”

She pushed her hands down above his head, leaning forward – so that his hands slipped from her breasts to her sides. She caught his bang in her finger, twirling it, looking down into his eyes. “Now now, Mr. Harker. Don’t like to me...” She licked her lips, wondering how precisely Dracula had made his voice so commanding and seductive. She wondered if she ... could ... relax her eyes like so and ... she felt a kind of power thrumming through her, and saw a willing relaxation of Jonathan’s face. He sagged back into the bed, gently, and his voice was husky and soft.

“I do, mistress...”

Mina’s fangs glittered as she grinned. “Do you like what I’m doing to you now?”

“Yes...” he murmured, his eyes growing more and more out of focus.

Mina flicked her tongue along her fangs. Her thighs spread, her sex dripping with eager arousal. “What do you want me to do to you, Mr. Harker?”

“Fuck me...” Jonathan whispered, softly, his hands sliding down to his sides. “P-Please...”

Mina reached down with one hand. She caressed his bulge, gently. “Bigger.” She crooned. His cock swelled against her palm – straining against his leggings. He was now as big as Dracula had been. “Mm ... bigger.” She ordered him – noticing how effortless his shapeshifting seemed to be, now that he was under her sway. It was not skill holding him back, was it? It was pure confidence – and with his confidence replaced by her order, his body was his own in a way it had never been before. His pants popped open, the button coming free and his immense gray cock slapped against her palm, filling her grip. Her fingers could not even reach the far side of him as she gripped him and ground the tip of his dick against her wanting cunt.

“Want me to take off my top?” she crooned.

“Yesssss...” Jonathan sounded almost desperate.

“Then make me...” she growled.

Jonathan snarled. And there, underneath meekness, underneath proper English gentility, there was a kindred spirit, one that Mina had felt, even before this. His fingers grew claws and those claws grabbed at her top and it came away in tatters. Thin red lines were traced along her flesh, the cuts opening and shutting almost at the same time as his claws dug through cloth and into her. Blood flowed along fingers that grew furred as Jonathan’s face shifted, growing longer and longer and more and more bestial. His ears grew longer and batlike and his tongue was long and stabbed into her mouth as he cradled the back of her neck with a paw that came to those sharp, sharp claws. His broad nose bumped against hers, and his wings spread behind him as his cock turned blood red.

He was the night, now – dark furred and muscular and animalistic, and his wings closed around her, enfolding her ... and Mina controlled that night. Her eyes closed to slivers, still looking into his.

His tongue slipped back and Jonathan growled. “Mistress...”

Her palms caressed along his muscular chest and she licked her lips. “Very good, Mr. Harker...” her fingers drew back and she broke her eye contact – and the instant he did, Jonathan blinked and jerked backwards. The difference in him before and after was as stark as ... well ... night and day. And while he remained a fusion of man and bat and beast, muscular and radiating with strength, sleek with black fur ... he was once more merely an English solicitor and clerk. He drew away, yelping as he looked at his hands, his wings flapping behind him.

“What on Earth-”

Mina giggled. “Jonathan,” she said, her voice bubbling over with mirth ... and it was not cutting. Not cutting at all. Mirth, joy in another’s absurdity, was just as vital as lust and teeth and claws. She grinned at him, then turned around and salaciously lifted her pale rump upwards, shoving it into the air as if she was some kind of wanton, eager whore in a back alley. She crooned into the bedsheets. “Mr. Harker, I do believe you have work to do with that marvelous tongue of yours...”

“M-Mina!” he stammered. “How did ... you were looking into my eyes and-”

She began to sway her hips, gently.

“-and then it was all hazy, and now I’m ... I’m...” He slowly trailed off. Even with her eyes closed, she could tell he was looking down now, straight at her rump. At her cunt. At her neediness. Jonathan whispered. “Oh good heavens...”

“You have the body of a beast. Use it.” She purred, quietly.

“I ... y-yes...” he paused, then she felt those paws of his sliding along her rump. His claws caressed her with gentleness, where before, he had cut her ... and she found, she loved both equally. Her eyes closed and she tensed ... and then cried out softly as his tongue swept into her – cool and needy and so very flexible. He knew nothing about what he was doing – that much was obvious after riding Lucy’s face more than once, and being in bed with Dracula. But, to Mina’s shock, she found that eagerness and attentiveness made for an equally pleasant time. Less ... pointedly ... but still enjoyable. It helped, too, that he learned fast.