Dracula's Arc

Chapter 3 of 4

Dracula had chosen happiness over a locked door. Now a knock came at his study. It was Ali Gamal, his own vampire progeny, a young inventor with ink on his fingers and a wooden crate in his arms. He set the crate on the table and pried it open. Inside sat four bracelets, each holding a small pale stone. "Sire," Ali said. "These hold moonlight. Enough to walk in the sun. I finished them tonight." Dracula lifted one bracelet to the candle. The stone glowed faint white. He had spent centuries hoarding moonlight in a dead medallion for a spell that was gone. Now his own progeny handed him the sun in a band of silver. He clasped it on his wrist and felt nothing burn. "You bring me daylight," Dracula said, "the night I stopped begging for it." He called his three wives. Sofía came in her feathered crown, arms crossed, waiting for the catch. Hanako came next, her veil dragging the floor. The Mother came last, her three-mile veil trailing behind her. Ali gave each a bracelet. Sofía turned hers in the light. "How long does the moonlight last?" she asked. "Long," Ali said. "They recharge under the moon each night." Sofía said nothing, but she clasped hers tight. She fed only on animals, hated her husband, and dreamed of leaving. A sun she could walk in was a road out. "Test it," the Mother said. "One line at a time." She did not trust a gift she had not cast herself. But she fastened the band and studied the stone. "Moon stored well," she admitted. "The boy has a witch's patience." Renfield shuffled in with the wine, hunched and thin, feeding on rats while his masters won the sun. He filled the cups without a word. Dracula raised his. He watched his wives wearing daylight on their wrists, and for the first time he thought of what his line could become, not what it had lost. Then he thought of Ali, and of the woman Ali loved. Carmilla de Styria had charmed her way into court, seeking a clan of her own. Her black mistress and Ali had grown close through the long nights of building these bracelets. Dracula set down his cup. "You gave my house the sun," he told Ali. "I will give you a wedding all of Walachia will remember." Ali's face broke open with joy. Sofía's did not. "A wedding binds Carmilla closer to your court," she warned. "She wants a clan. You are handing her a place to build one." Dracula heard her. He clasped Ali's shoulder anyway. "Let her build. My progeny is happy. That is enough tonight." The order went out before dawn. Walachia would gather. Ali Gamal and the mistress of Carmilla of Styria would wed. Dracula had traded a dead dream for a living celebration. But he had also opened his court's gates to Carmilla, and she had waited a long time for exactly that.