Greetings one and all! Fair warning I will be attempting a slow burn sort of romance with this particular story so I may not get straight to the smut. But fear not, it shall not take twenty chapters or more to reach that point. With warmest regards, enjoy the beginning of this new story.
------------------
The sky was progressively growing darker, threatening heavy rain as Alexander stared across the tiny valley at what he'd discovered. It wasn't on any maps, nor did there seem to be any roads leading to it, it was simply there, carved into the side of the mountains. A monument to the human will and desire to leave their mark on just about everything.
Alexander was looking at a castle, one that was certainly quite old and though age had dulled some of its appeal, it was still a rather beautiful sight. Soaring towers, exquisitely wrought windows and black iron fences or decorations lent the structure a feeling of prestige that simply wasn't matched by modern architecture.
Now Alexander had seen many beautiful buildings in his lifetime and it was quite the lifetime indeed considering he was far, far older than the average human. See, he isn't truly human anymore, and this would be perfectly exemplified every full moon. He is a werewolf and this has afforded him the chance to witness the advancement of the world in ways that no mere human could ever truly wish to match.
However, immortality does come with some drawbacks, the obvious one being boredom of a most extreme variety, which is why he'd taken to traveling the world and was now picking his way through the mountains of Romania, seeking out places that were either untouched by humanity, or had long been forgotten. This place it seemed was the latter, and he was most intrigued indeed, especially considering what kind of stories had been birthed in a country such as this.
So with a sniff of the air, the straining of his hearing, Alexander put his six foot five frame into motion, carefully picking his way down the side of this tiny valley. He may be a werewolf, but broken bones still hurt and took time to heal unless he had a fresh meal on hand. And while he did so thunder boomed in the distance, causing him to hasten his descent.
He had the unfortunate luck to not quite make it to the castle before the heavens unleashed their watery wrath upon him, much to his displeasure. But the castle was right there and now that he was closer it was far larger than it had first seemed.
Making it to the front door he didn't even bother knocking, the place was clearly abandoned and thus he pushed the door open and stepped inside, shuddering violently and shaking cold water off his body with a soft growl of discomfort. Now though he had shelter, as rickety as it might be, it was shelter all the same.
Now he took the time to look around, and it was every bit as grand as it looked from the outside. Tattered, moth-eaten banners hung from tall columns, old and rusted braziers or candelabras lined the way deeper into the castle and it all had this musty air of antiquity to it. It made his nose twitch and itch, causing him to sniffle now and then in an attempt to alleviate the feeling. He didn't know who the castle had once belonged to; if any descendants of the former masters still roamed the Earth, they were missing out on some prime property.
Pulling out his cellphone he took some pictures, mainly for later when he had access to a computer and could research the castle, if any sort of records existed of it that is. The banners themselves proved to be the most interesting things in this room, for they still bore the faded crest of whomever had occupied the place. A stylized V wrapped in thorny rose vines, simple and beautiful in its own way, yet gave him little information on who exactly owned this castle.
Still, it was something he could look into later and though he wanted to do nothing more than get out of his soaked clothes and start a fire, his curiosity got the better of him and he continued to explore the castle, pausing only to look at the large and quite faded portrait that hung at the far end of the entrance hall. Though he couldn't see all of it thanks to time taking its toll, he could see that the subject was a quite well endowed woman with deathly pale skin and black lipstick covered lips, but that was the extent of what he could see, for the rest of her face had been eaten away by moths and weather. Still, just looking at the portrait sent a shiver down his spine in a not so unpleasant manner.
Peering into the rooms he came across, he saw many things that seemed outwardly normal, dining halls, barracks for guards and soldiers, servants quarters and what he assumed was a stairway down to some dungeons. Every good castle needed a dungeon. Finally, after climbing a set of spiral stairs he found what was clearly the master bedroom, which was more than just the bedroom it seemed. There was also a connected study, bookshelves filled to the brim with musty old books that he was certain would be illegible, and if they weren't then he still wouldn't be able to read Romanian anyway. He knew just enough to get him around the country and that was it.
The room itself was quite nicely furnished, the bed looked to be in passable condition as much of its foundation was made from stone, while any embellishments were done in wood and metal. He doubted it'd be very pleasant to sleep on anymore, the mattress was probably quite awful these days. That said, back when the place was occupied it must have been quite the room.
Now what struck him as odd was that as he looked around the study, there was one distinctly out of place object on the bookshelves, that being a perfectly preserved, if dusty book that was perfectly upright. All the other books had long since fallen over or off the shelves, been eaten up by bugs and whatnot, except this one.
"No way..." He muttered, inner child rearing to life as thoughts of hidden passages and rooms filled his mind. Perhaps carelessly he approached the bookshelf and reached out, tugging on the clearly fake book and watching as it tipped towards him. There was a mechanical thunk from somewhere in the wall behind the bookshelf, and nearby another section of the wall slid down into the floor, revealing a spiral staircase that descended into darkness.
Immediately he was blasted with stale, rancid air and he gagged, waving a hand in front of his sensitive nose. One of the downsides to being a werewolf was that even in his human form, his senses were still quite keen. It took maybe a minute or two for the smell to dissipate and the air to circulate, then he stepped onto the staircase and turned on his travel flashlight. Pitch darkness was not something he could see in, in any form. The trip down took a lot longer than he'd been expecting though it wasn't much trouble at all, and when he reached the bottom at long last, he found himself in a dark, cavernous room. Yet the air smelled strange down here, metallic almost, and as he played the flashlight around the room he began to see why. Glass pipes, thin and delicate looking, lined both the floor, walls and ceiling, bound together and held in place by thick metal bands of brass, here and there were bellows and large gears, a giant machine built for an unknown purpose.
Finally the light landed upon some sort of angled stone pillar that stretched from the floor to the back wall, all the pipes leading right up and into the back of it. He frowned slightly, knowing that this was certainly not normal at all and yet he could not help himself as he approached the strange pillar, noting that it was resting at a perfect 45° angle and seemed to have some sort of seam running through part of it.
Moving closer, he felt the floor beneath his foot depress, a rumbling, grinding sound following as ancient machinery stirred to life. Around him the bellows began to push air through the system, the gears began to turn and hidden away beneath the floor, great vats of crimson liquid began to bubble and slosh about.
"I should...probably go." He muttered, yet he did not, frozen in place as he was by shock and curiosity. A gurgling sound filled the room as everything got up to the appropriate speed, and as he played the light over the pipes, dark fluid began to rush through them. With all the inevitability of death itself, the fluids twisted and wound their way towards the pillar, which hissed and split open at the seams, the top layer sliding down into the floor and revealing something he'd never seen before yet knew must exist.
A desiccated, feminine body lay within the pillar, cradled by soft velvet cushions, a longsword tucked at their side. Their clothes were quite fine, if terribly old fashioned they wore minimal jewelry as well. Yet the clothes and weapon were not his focus, as his eyes were glued to the open mouth of the body which sported two elongated fangs that still glinted a pure white even after all this time.
