Revelation
Red eyes blazed with absolute rage and ineffective snaps darted at the men gathered around the beast. Were the vampire not so tightly restrained, those snaps would result in severe injuries, ripping through muscle and bone like so much tissue. But Dracula was weak, starved and injured from the initial capture, separated from earth and coffin, and those thick leather straps immobilized him. Not entirely, for the vampire was allowed some minor motion as he flexed and struggled under them.
The cheek was pressed against the thin cushion, provided after the beast had rolled about and bled, cheek torn against the steel table earlier that night. A thick band wrapped about his head, steel D rings sewn to it with metal threads and thick hemp, and those D rings snapped to sturdy metal clasps. Neck, shoulders, chest, arms, legs...there was nearly as much leather covering the beast as there was skin visible. Even so, as a fresh shudder raced down the vampire's body, muscles knotting and straining, every man present took an unconcious step back, bodies tensing.
Three times tonight, the vampire had begun to break free, had been forced down and burned with crucifixes and Host until restraints were repaired, new ones added. Silent from the large metal gag, the vampire's eye could only roll at them and glare as Dracula communicated his rage and fury in the only way now left to him. Even his snaps were muffled, though the jaw muscles worked and clenched furiously. The metal gag, a large copper bit forced between his jaws, was not there to silence the beast, but to prevent those fangs from closing in a victim's flesh.
The silence, the reduction in volume of the beasts snarls and growls, was mere bonus, the infuriated clicks of sharp teeth on the softer copper punctuating each snap instead of the clashing of the impressive dentition on itself. Watching the beast's ineffective struggles to escape, it's muffled voice, the neutralizing of its greatest weapon, Abraham found himself smiling slightly with excusable pride. Even now, head twisted to the side, the vampire was unwillingly showing his neck to his new human master.
Abraham had done so merely to allow access to the great vein in the beast's neck. Like the copper bit, the additional effectiveness was mere happenstance. But the beast was muted and humbled as well as restrained and prepared, and after several minutes of ineffectual struggling, Abraham was pleased to conclude that the restraints were successful. Remaining by the head of the beast, he dismissed the watchful men to begin collecting the items needed for the night's work and to remove the detritus of snaps and straps and remaining unused restraints.
Unaware of what he was truly doing, simply proud of his achievement and relaxing somewhat from the very tense previous hour of repeated and failed attempts to restrain the very dangerous monster, he began idly petting the creature. The hair, though gray and filthy, was unmistakably soft and silky. He truly was not thinking of what he was doing, merely occupying his hands as he turned over the plans for the monster in his mind. It took a minute or more before he realized that the beast had stopped its attempts to snarl and struggle.
He glanced down, and found his gaze caught by the red orb of the vampire. No longer blazing with fury, it had calmed, the beast watching him...warily? He was uncertain, the vampire's expression was so...odd. He'd seen it gloat, seen it angry, infuriated...and as he puzzled over the odd expression, his hand ceased its steady and light contact. Within moments, the vampire's fury had resurfaced and it bucked weakly and ineffectively against its restraints, snarling viciously though the gag muffled the sound and the straps stopped his movements.
Puzzled, thoughts swirling a bit, curious at what he might have seen, Abraham moved to begin...petting...the beast again, with deliberation this time. As he reached down, the eye rolled to watch his hand, the vampire's neck curling and straining as it sought to move from under his hand. Yes...it HAD flinched as he touched it, continuing to glare. From the hairs that began at the forehead, over the crown of the head, continuing down the back until the leather strap stopped him, Abraham repeated his movements. And...the vampire quieted again.
With the rage eased, the beast's fear was plain to see. Fear? Dracula was frightened? The lean body shuddered, but this time it wasn't a contortion to attempt escape, but...fear.
Abraham was dumbfounded.
He'd expected only anger, rage, had hoped for at best a resignation, that the beast would resign itself to biding its time until it could rebel more effectively. Fear? That was so...utterly unexpected. Though the eye was an inhuman scarlet, the fear and near-panic were there and undeniably human.
This was not what he had expected, not at all.
Wondering, he continued his gentle touches, watching as the near-panic slowly faded more and more. In a low voice, Abraham indicated to the other men to stop their preparations, and move into the adjoining room, and wait. As they removed themselves, the red eye ceased darting about at the movements of the men, and the muscles of the beast's face relaxed further. The vampire had found them threatening?
Abraham considered the vampire's behavior in this new light. Not furious that he was so restrained, but...perhaps...terrified? A cat was at its fiercest when most frightened. The vampire had never screamed, moaned, given voice to any indications of fear as a human would have. It had simply attacked, again and again, snarled and growled and lunged and fought them with every fiber of its being. Van Helsing had never once thought that Dracula was anything but angry at the situation in which it had found itself.
Minutes ticked by, as he continued to gently soothe the beast, observing with a clinical and scientific eye, wondering with a human heart at the beast. With no one around but him, surrounded only by quiet, with Abraham's gentle touch on his head, the beast wilted further. The fear faded, and the deep fatigue it had concealed became visible. Rage had covered fear, fear had covered exhaustion. As rage eased and fear relaxed with the continued calm and peace, exhaustion took over the beast. The wary eye still watched each movement of the hand, but the lid over it drooped, the skin around the mouth sagged where it did not stretch over the bit, the tension that had vibrated the monster's body slowly eased away, leaving it limp.
Abraham's hand moved from the shaggy gray top of the head, scratching behind the ear where it emerged from under the strap, then to the nape of the neck and above, where skin showed between restraints. There was silence in the room except for the dry rustling and scritching as he gently scratched the dirt-and-blood-crusted skin and hair of the vampire. Rapid blinks showed the vampire fighting fatigue to stay awake, and failing.
Dracula was fightint to stay awake...and losing. The situation had changed dramatically. No one was there to threaten him, the men that had loomed over him now absent. Abraham, instead of hurting him or taunting him, was providing a gentle and utterly non-threatening, pleasant bit of contact. Instead of tense, sometimes frantic men shouting directions and warnings to each other and forcing the beast back with holy items, burning and rending his flesh...he was surrounded by the quiet of an empty room. And he hadn't missed the simple thoughtfulness of something as minor as providing a small pad under his face when the straps had ground his cheek against the metal.
He'd expected torture, that Van Helsing would be gloating over the hunter's prey as the man began to work on him. As a human, he'd been intimately familiar with all the means of torture available, had received and dealt such. Strapped to a table clearly meant to hold down a body, surrounded by the dark and cold stones of a secluded room under a home, men gathered about him, treating him as an object...he'd been terrified. Refusing to be frightened, he'd forced the anger into fury, using the strength of rage to nearly break free again and again. Finally restrained, he'd thought they'd begin on him, had seen them removing leftover straps and bits and bringing mysterious trays...
And then, instead, the gentle pat on his head. Abraham's face, instead of a vicious glee, had looked...tired. Preoccupied. And the touch, unconcious though it was, had been gentle. Now, while not comfortable, he was not twisted in any uncomfortable way, simply... restrained. Abraham continued his gentle touches, fingers soothing away itches Dracula had not been aware of, constant and gentle and entirely unthreatening. Fear left him, leaving only fatigue and exhaustion behind.
If they were going to torture him...they wouldn't have made him comfortable. Abraham would be pinching and twisting, not gently soothing. And as the fear died, fatigue rose in him. But he didn't want to be on the table, most of his form concealed under those metal claps and thick leather bands. He was lonely, so lonely...vampires had been human, he had been human, and it had been so many weeks, months, since he'd felt another human under his touch. The need for simple contact was stirring in him; he was lonely, unbearably lonely, and for the first time in far too long, there was a human there that was not acting as a foe. And his head itched. Not coherent, too fogged with fatigue to truly think, he was aware mostly that he did not want to be on the table, he was lonely, and there was a person there.
If he'd been attempting to escape, the wards would have forced him back down. All his prior attempts to shift his form had failed miserably as a result. But now...he wasn't thinking of escape. He was simply too tired. He needed the security Abraham offered, needed rest so badly, and had an abominable itched under the top of his ear that he wanted those talented fingers to soothe. And the lean form melted into fog, reforming on the floor into a free vampire leaning against the legs of a shocked and frightened Abraham.
Eyes half-closed, the blind face nuzzled at the man's legs. The warmth of a human beat at his cheeks, the rough fabric of pants rasped at his face. He could feel the heartbeat, hear blood as it rushed through the veins in a pleasant susurration, smell and taste Abraham's scent on the air...and the knot of loneliness eased. He was too tired to be afraid, to think...it had been anger and fear keeping him in motion and with those gone...he could only slump against the man.
Abraham's initial reaction when the vampire had vanished from the table had been to shout in fear, but shock and, he had to admit, terror, had frozen his vocal cords. And the vampire had appeared again immediately...at his feet.
Not biting, nor tearing, nor beating at him...but slumped in utter and unmistakeable exhaustion. A brief nuzzle of the face, and he took the request for what it was, hand moving numbly and clumsily to resume moving through the vampire's hair, this time unbothered by the straps and restraints. A cool gust of air as the beast sighed against him...and then stopped moving entirely.
Crouching down, he settled the vampire carefully on the floor, motioning in the shocked men that had watched the vampire vanish and reappear. Dracula stirred only briefly, a cold pale hand reaching out to rest across his foot, then sleeping again.
"Open the doors between here and the coffin, and remove the lid from his coffin." Abraham's whispered voice drew confused glances, but he was adamant.
The vampire could have killed him, killed all of them, exhausted though it was. Instead, it had fallen asleep. The room with the coffin was warded and sealed; the vampire wouldn't be able to escape it.
And Abraham was fascinated. What would the vampire do when it was awake? Forget harvesting vials of blood to test, forget palpating and diagramming the beast's build and the positions of its tendons. They could study that at any time, after all.
Now...what was the beast thinking? Carefully scooping him up, head cradled against the shoulder, Abraham carried the vampire to his coffin. He was only somewhat surprised when the head nuzzled into his shoulder, the vampire ignoring the close proximity of a neck. He'd taken an awful risk in doing this...but...Dracula was not what he had thought. And if the beast had trusted him enough, needed him enough, that it would fall asleep at his feet...he'd trust it to carry it the few seconds through the basement.
Dracula didn't stir as he settled the monster into its coffin. It might be a few days before the vampire woke...and he had a lot of thinking to do in the meantime. It was with a very distracted expression that he dismissed the other men for the night, and returned to his own rooms.