Melusine
Fandom: Dracula (2020)
Characters: Count Dracula, Agatha Van Helsing
Relationship: Count Dracula/Agatha Van Helsing
Rating: Mature
@hopipollahorror @alma37
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‘Let her go.’
Agatha stepped forward.
‘Why?’ Dracula bowed his head.
‘What difference does it make to you?’ Agatha asked. ‘Just let her go.’
God, how tired she was.
What a long day. What a terrible night.
She looked at Dracula. With that rumpled shirt, covered in blood and dirt, with that wide, mocking smile. With that curiosity, anger, and childish joy of his. She closed her eyes for a moment and thought about the dead women up there. About the long life she'd left behind in Budapest. Even about her parents in Amsterdam. How absurd it all was.
She opened her eyes. Then looked at Dracula. In his dark eyes interest was mingled with wariness.
‘You don't need a victim,’ Agatha said. ‘You need someone to talk to. Mina isn't suitable for that. Take me.’
***
Agatha opened her eyes and stared at the lights of a huge, ornate chandelier. She looked down and around. The last thing she expected after death was to end up in a wine cellar. Was this her purgatory? Or what? What was she supposed to do here? Drink herself to death... realizing the gravity of her sins?
Agatha, concentrate.
She looked around again. And groaned.
‘Not you.’
‘You said you wanted to be the one I can talk to.’
Dracula rose from the chess table where he was sitting. He approached her.
‘I meant that you would eat me and gain access to my... what do you call it... soul or memory?’
‘Oh, so you've read about that.’
‘‘Blood is lives.’’
‘And Jonathan still didn't get it.’
‘He was a lawyer, not an expert on vampires and werewolves.’
Dracula looked at her intently.
‘Sit,’ he said suddenly, gesturing to the table behind him.
Agatha glanced at the table, then back at Dracula. Then slowly walked over to the table and sat down.
***
‘Don't be silly. Whatever Plato wrote, I maintain –’
‘Checkmate, Agatha.’
‘Oh, damn.’
‘You get distracted when you explain your point of view. And that's why you always miss an important move.’
‘So, about Plato –’
‘Have you had anyone? In life?’
Agatha fell silent.
‘What do you mean, in life?’
He smiled.
‘Before the monastery.’
She paused. Shrugged briefly.
‘Depends on the definition of ‘had.’’
‘Agatha, leave Plato alone.’
Agatha laughed.
‘The foundations of formal logic were laid by Aristotle.’
‘To hell with both of them. So, did you have someone or not?’
This time she answered seriously.
‘I honestly don't know. It was all so…’
What could she tell him? About her quiet childhood, the cramped courtyard of her parents' house, overgrown with thick grass? About the little shop in Amsterdam where she met a frail young man who brought her flowers and sweets? The taste of warm cookies, hurried encounters, promises of eternal love. The owner of the neighboring shop, a friend of her father's, who proposed to her one winter evening and dashed her timid dreams of happiness.
Agatha remembered well how she cried that night. How she promised herself she would never marry him. And in the morning, her father said that if she didn't, if she didn't agree to a decent, worthy husband, he would throw her out. Everyone knew she was a whore, her father told her. The neighbors had seen her hiding with that young man behind the barn. She was probably already pregnant. So there were two choices: marry the shopkeeper or go to a convent.
Agatha chose the convent.
‘He came the day before I left,’ Agatha said, looking at Dracula. ‘He said I was already spoiled anyway. That no one would know and that this was my only chance. That I should be grateful that before my life ended, I would get to experience what a real man is.’
Dracula was silent.
‘Father was downstairs in the living room. The door was locked from the outside,’ she finished.
The silence was very long.
‘Did you think I'd do this to Mina?’ Dracula finally asked.
‘I don't know,’ Agatha looked at him wearily. What a long day. What a long life. ‘I don't know,’ she repeated. ‘But I didn't want anyone else to…’
If this was going to happen to Mina, Agatha wanted to at least open her door.
Maybe Mina would be lucky and escape.
Dracula's voice brought her out of her reverie. Dracula was sitting across from her, looking at her. For some reason, his hands were holding her shoulders. Agatha blinked back tears. What was wrong with her? Why...
‘I told you, we're in Bistritz. In a hotel. You'll come to in a hotel room, in bed. It won't be pleasant, because I've been drinking your blood for two weeks, and I've drunk quite a lot. You'll feel dizzy. But it will pass. Three days, maybe four, a week at the most, and you'll be fine. I promise you.’
Agatha looked up at him, confused.
‘I'll leave you some food and water and pay for your room for two weeks,’ Dracula continued.
‘What…’
She still didn't fully understand. With blurred vision, she watched Dracula rise and release her, looking down at her. His expression was unreadable. Agatha looked at him wearily, helplessly. She felt as if she were drowning. Or waking up. Dracula's image faded, surrounded by a thick fog.
‘Mina is fine,’ Dracula said, either beside her or in her head. His voice was quiet, thoughtful, and it was the last thing she heard before Dracula vanished completely.
***
The bitter taste in her mouth nearly made Agatha gag. Sitting up abruptly, she coughed. Then she pushed the matted hair out of her eyes. She took several deep breaths. For a few moments, everything around her swirled and swayed. When the world calmed and ceased to resemble a stormy sea, Agatha decided to open her eyes.
She was in a simply furnished room. Simply, if not sparse. A chair, a table, a bed. The window was missing bars, Agatha thought gloomily. Otherwise, it was quite a madhouse. She tried to recall how she had ended up here, but her memory kicked like a restive horse. Agatha caught images from the edge of her consciousness, like a half-forgotten dream. A table, chess, wine, someone's voice.
Once upon a time, when her father was still her friend, when he loved her and Agatha's mother was still alive, he read Agatha bedtime stories. One of them was the story of Melusine, the river maiden, half woman, half snake. Her upper body was beautiful, while her lower body was scaly and slippery, ending in a cold snake tail.
In the fairy tale, Melusine met a handsome prince who saw her splashing in a forest lake. Since Melusine was only waist-deep in the water, the prince couldn't see her tail and assumed she was simply a beautiful maiden. He fell in love and proposed marriage. And Melusine loved him too. But since the prince wasn't the first to come to her forest or the first to see her, Melusine knew that sooner or later he would discover who she was, sooner or later he would see her snake tail. She met him late at night, at dusk, on moonless nights, at dawn, in the fog, and never left the water. But she knew that one day he would see her naked. He would see her and realize she was a monster.
She couldn't bear it.
Agatha didn't know the end of this tale. Her father read it from an old book he'd found either in the shop across the street or in the attic. Several pages had been torn out, so the tale ended with the prince proposing to Melusine. She agreed, but on the condition that she travel to the palace alone, in a closed wagon, carried in a huge barrel of water.
Agatha liked to imagine Melusine becoming a princess, her tail disappearing, transforming into graceful feminine legs, and she and the prince living happily, with many children.
Then Agatha's mother died of typhus, her father turned to drink and spent almost all of the small fortune he'd made selling tobacco and sugar, and the owner of a nearby shop proposed to Agatha.
Mina. The memories were vague and fuzzy, but the name pierced through like sunlight through thick fog. Mina was gone. She was fine.
Agatha winced and felt her neck ache. She reached out and groped a fresh scar on the left.
And then she remembered.
Agatha closed her eyes. Opening them, she looked around. As if she were taking in the room anew, the table, the chair, the window, the closet, and the large suitcase next to it. She glanced at the door.
The door was open.
***
Dracula locked the doors to his cabin and threw his cloak onto the made bunk.
Hearing movement behind him, he turned around.
‘I knew there was an illegal passenger in cabin number nine.’
‘Why illegal? I bought a ticket.’
Agatha stepped forward from the darkness.
‘Have you decided to drive the aspen stake into me after all?’
‘I decided to thank you.’
Dracula came closer.
‘I've been drinking your blood for two weeks.’
‘I didn't notice.’
‘I did my best.’
‘You know, I spent twenty years in a monastery,’ Agatha said. ‘I thought I'd never know what was written on those torn pages.’
‘Torn pages?’
Agatha shook her head.
‘Later. It doesn't matter.’
They stood facing each other, so close that Agatha could feel the warmth of his body.
‘How many people have you eaten already?’ Agatha whispered.
‘None,’ Dracula said.
Her surprise was so obvious that Dracula chuckled.
‘I've been alone too long,’ he said. ‘I forgot that people are willing to do the strangest things for the right price.’
‘You pay people for biting them?’
‘I paid two sailors in the port and a handsome young man from the passengers, that one with a lover and a young wife. There are so many people in the world now that I'm guaranteed variety.’
‘Kiss me,’ said Agatha.
When she could breathe again, she found herself standing with her back pressed against the wooden wall of the cabin.
‘Agatha, what was written on the torn pages?’ Dracula asked breathlessly.
She smiled.
‘‘I'm not afraid of you at all.’’
