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.
