Alucard

The bookstore was old, dusty; much like the books it sheltered inside. A faint smell of mildew permanently tinted the air. It was dark, but, as a whole, it was a place he loved to be. It was part of his home; perhaps even more so than the house he lived in. Here, there was no judgement. No racism. No favoritism. Just books.

Adrian spent the long hours of the night pouring through the old tomes, always careful of the rotting strings and weakening glue holding the pages of each together. He knew he wasn't supposed to, but his curiousity got the better of him. Besides, customers were few and far between. Shelves could be tidied and floors could be swept free of dirt only so many times. The boredom between was overwhelming, and the call of knowledge was too much to resist.

Book after book, page after page, he learned so much more than he ever could have imagined. The history of his people, the true struggles of power in the world, the shift of just such power to the others... It fascinated him immensely. He would have been content to spend eons in the store, pouring over the things he longed to know.

And, honestly, he might have. His blood had already turned. Being part human, one always had a fear of living a normal life; aging, sickness, dying. He knew many like himself lived to be considered 'old' by the surface's standards. Some had even died of age, their blood never fully turning. 

He, however, had finally stopped the aging process, his other parentage taking hold of his body and fixing him in his current state. Adrian had never bothered to keep track, always fearing what might become of him, but he could guess that he had stopped at about nineteen, twenty. Relatively young, but so much better than he had hoped for. Aging wasn't the only risk of being a half-blood. Some of his kind had turned too young. Infants, never growing, never maturing. Never learning to take care of themselves. It wasn't acknowledged among any in the city or beyond, but Adrian knew what happened to those. No one wanted to bother to take care of anyone but themselves.

Every so often, Adrian caught himself dwelling on the kind of world he lived in, but he soon drowned it out by losing himself in the books around him. It was just too depressing. In the books, he was happy. He could ignore the world. 

The bookstore, owned by his father, was Adrian's life. Every day and every night he spent among the shelves. He slept in a small room above the store, something he had finally managed to convince his family to allow for him. It would keep him out of the house, he had reasoned. Out of the house, and out of sight. He knew he was an embarrassment for his parents, but, for one small instant, he had been glad of that. Now he had his independence, his freedom. 

But, like everything good, it could only last so long. In the dark underground city, the fact became more true, and, eventually, the happiness Adrian had managed to make for himself would fall apart. He knew it, and it made him cherish it all the more. 

He had lost track of the days, of the customers, of everything. Night was almost over, and it would be time to ascend the stair to his living quarters. Sighing heavily, he gently closed the book he held, relishing the quiet rustle it made as its pages were reunited. The tome went back to its shelf, to rest until someone came into the store looking for that subject in particular, perhaps a hundred years hence.

The lights were extinguished, save a lone candle on the desk, just enough for Adrian to see his way up the stairs with. As he turned around the corner of the desk, he heard a tiny jingle behind him, muffled by the layer of dust covering the bell. Somewhat disappointed that another one of his books would probably leave that night, Adrian turned to the customer and shook his head, his long silky white hair shifting over his shoulders.

"I'm sorry," He said softly, so used to whispering among the books. "We've already closed. If you want a book, you'll have to come back tomorrow night."

The stranger's expression was hard to discern, his face half-hidden in the shadows of the hooded cloak he wore. Adrian felt uneasy, but he dismissed it. He was uncomfortable with all of his kind. The man made no move to leave.

"Sir?" Adrian said, a bit louder this time. He just wanted the stranger to leave.

Instead, the man shifted closer, his feet making no noise of the stone tiled floor.

"...I'm not looking for a book." His voice was just as quiet as Adrian's. "I'm actually here to see you." A few steps closer he took, and Adrian tensed his body, resisting the urge to sprint up the stairs and lock himself in his room. He hated them all, and wanted to be as far away from them as he could.

"Well, I'm sorry, but the store is closed. I'm leaving now." The sternness of his own voice surprised him. He turned again and headed for the stairs. Demanding, pushy... he was tired of people altogether. He was sure that this one was no different from all the others... self-absorbed and idiotic. And this one had disturbed his tranquility.

A sudden pain bolted up his left arm as it was wretched to the side, and all breath left him as his stomach slammed into the front edge of the black oak desk. Adrian's arm was pulled further and further back, his torso and abdomen forced to remain against the hard desk by the weight of the stranger and unable to twist with his arm, until pain wracked his body and the bone in his upper arm threatened to snap. It was excruciating, and Adrian had to fight to keep his scream contained. 

"Oh, you're leaving, are you?" The voice mocked him. Adrian's breaths were labored now, the heat of his exhalations ghosting over the cold surface pressed against his cheek. Still his arm was pushed further, and he could feel the tight pull inside his arm. His body couldn't take much more. 

"W-what...do..you w-want?" Adrian gasped, desperate to distract the stranger. A fleeting though crossed his mind that he could be very close to death. Was that what the man had come for? Had he been hired to end the pathetic and miserable life that was Adrian Murdoch's? It wasn't so uncommon; assassins were useful, a tool to dispose of someone you don't wish to dirty your hands with. But... who would have hired him?

Adrian's thoughts were interrupted by another sharp burst of pain, and he bit into his tongue in his effort to keep silent. It was to his surprise that his arm had not given out yet. But... what did it matter? If he was to die anyway...

"What do I want?" The stranger leaned forward, and Adrian could feel the hot, thick breath of the man as his cracked lips touched Adrian's ear.

"...You."

Rationalization became an obscure thing as everything in Adrian's mind snapped. He was no longer a thinking, caring creature. What did his arm matter, when compared the death, or... worse, that the intruding man was planning for him? An unearthly savage scream tore through his throat, and he wretched his own arm further up, the pain becoming a thousand times more terrible as the fragile bone split, shattering up his arm. Finally, he was free, and his momentum carried into a downward punch from his good arm, straight into the man's stomach. 

Now the intruder doubled over in pain. Adrian saw his chance and took it. A thick book was lying on the desk to his side. It made a satisfying sound against the skull of the stranger. 

The world was tilting, and Adrian was reeling from the agony. His body was shaking, and every step he took threatened to send him to the floor, next to the unconscious man who surely would have killed him. His mind didn't register the heavy book slipping from his now-bloody fingers, or the flickering light of the candle that was dripping wax onto the desk. Nor would he remember later the effort it took to drag himself, somewhat literally, up the spiraling stairway to his room. All he would remember is that he had not only locked the door once he was inside, but had barred it with every piece of furniture he could manage to move before the darkness overcame him.

---

When he finally found the light again, he found himself unable to tell how much time had passed. The door to his room was still barred shut, and the ache in both his head and arm had settled into a dull throb. Again he thought to his heritage. If he had been a pure-blood, his arm would have healed quickly, leaving no trace that an injury had ever occurred. If only he hadn't been born half human... if only his mother hadn't gone to the surface... if only she hadn't met the quiet, grey-eyed man, waiting in the park for someone he knew he'd never see again...

Adrian let out a low moan, and forced his mind away from the path of thoughts. He knew where they ended, and it wasn't something he wanted to relive. His father - his REAL father - was dead, and that wasn't something he could change. There was no point in dwelling on the subject. 

It wasn't difficult to distract himself, this time. The floor was uncomfortable, and his body hurt from top to bottom from hours of lying on it. Still, he was alive. Adrian was surprised at how uncomfortable the thought made him. As much as he didn't want to die... surely the man who wanted to kill him was still waiting for him, and that death would be all the worse because Adrian had resisted.

As much as he hated it, he knew what he had to do. If someone wanted him dead, there was only one person who could protect him - the man he had called his father from the time he had been born. The man Adrian's mother had cheated on... with a human. Adrian had never held any doubts that his father hated him, or about why. He merely stayed out of his father's way, and did his best to conceal his own presence from the rest of the city.

Still, that man was the only one he knew with enough power to stop an assassination. He held a position on the High Counsel, and that alone made him one of the most powerful men among their kind. If anyone could protect Adrian, it would be him.

Adrian stood and shook off his weariness. His arm was relatively numb, but a sharp pain sliced through every time he pushed it too far. As such, it was one-handed that he moved most of the furniture back from the door. 

Fear took his breath again as another possibility occurred to him. Had the man tried to break down the door? Nothing suggested anything of the sort, so... Adrian leaned back against the wall, terrified of what he might find downstairs. Was...was the stranger lying in the floor still, in a pool of his own blood? Had the impact of the book been so great that it had actually killed Adrian's attacker?

Absentmindedly, Adrian clenched his fist, too absorbed in his line of thinking to realize that his fingernails were cutting into his palms. Had...had he really killed the man? Was he capable of such a thing? That wasn't the kind of person he thought of himself as.... someone who could take the life of another...

After what seemed like far too long, agonizing about everything that had happened in just those few minutes, Adrian finally accepted that he would have to go, would have to see for himself exactly what was waiting. It terrified him.

The store was nearly pitch-black, with a few streams of light sifting in through the dust from the lights decorating the cavern beyond. Any other time, Adrian would have stopped to admire its beauty. It was a scene befitting the small library he loved so much. Tonight, however, he didnt' see that beauty. His eyes darted from side to side, searching the shadows for any sign of movement. When he was fairly certain that the shelves hid nothing behind them, and only then, did he dare to round the corner and lay eyes on the very spot he had been struggling for his life. Indeed, a large pool of blood stained the floor, all of it darkened and dried to the stone floor. 

Adrian fumbled through a desk drawer, and finally found the matches to light the cold remnant of candle that had been left blazing for an undetermined length of time. The tiny flame lit up the area around him, and he took a better look at what could easily have been his own blood, if things had not gone as they did.

The stranger had gone, and quite a while back, it seemed. Whether he lived couldn't be said for certain, but Adrian very much doubted that the man would even have wounds the next time they met.                  

-----

"You assaulted a pureblood."

It wasn't a question. Somehow, some way, his father had known, even before Adrian had had a chance to open his lips to voice the matter that grieved him so. He knew there was no reply that could possibly counter the accusation brought before him. No matter that he first had been attacked; no matter that it had been the only way to save his own life; no matter that the dark-haired man standing beside his father bore not a single scratch as evidence of their encounter. The stranger carried a pedigree Adrian could never hope to match, and to defy one such as he was a crime punishable by things far worse than death.

Adrian could feel his heart pounding in his chest, threatening to burst.

"How could you?" The words were barely a whisper on Adrian's lips. He glared at his father, so casually lounged beside the stranger that he had only moments before introduced to his son. His father... had betrayed him. As much as his father had hated him, Adrian could hardly believe that hatred extended to such lengths.

"You do not care to deny the accusation?" His father asked, his voice expressing his boredom and disinterest with such petty things as the life of a half breed.

"Would it matter if he did?" The stranger interrupted with a flip of his hand. "His fate is sealed."

Beneath a shock of black hair, Richard Murdoch's dark green eyes pierced into his son's. "You brought the charges against him. His punishment is yours to decide."

"How kind..." The stranger chuckled, absently straightening the hood shrouding his face. It was without pause, without a second thought that he condemned the boy standing before him. 

Adrian wanted so much to lash out, to strike the man taunting him for doing nothing more than protecting his own life. Would they have done any less, if they had been in the same situation? ...It didn't matter, and he knew it. He was a half breed, by birth lesser than the lowest of their kind. He was an outcast, an embarrassment; and, now, he was going to pay for it, though it was no fault of his own.

There was nothing he could do. Even if he had the speed or the strength to land a blow to either man, dozens of soldiers stood within the halls, just beyond the room they now deliberated inside. Dozen of men, trained to protect one as important as Adrian's father, none of which would hesitate for a second when summoned. Regardless, he doubted he could ever bring himself to raise a hand against his father. Adrian's fate was, indeed, sealed. The only man who could have saved him was now sentencing him. 

It was, then, with a defeated resignation of one who can do nothing but watch, Adrian lowered his gaze, away from his traitorous father, and found his voice one last time before the two guards behind him began locking the shackles about his wrists.

"Does mother know?"

-----

At some times in life, time seems to fly away from us. Other times, it seems to slow considerably, until minutes drag on into hours, and hours into days. 

On few occasions, though, does time seem to stop altogether. There are no days, no nights, no minutes... one hour bleeds into the next, and the next, and the next, until time becomes a thing no longer real.

In times such as these, it is easy not only to lose time, but to lose yourself. As reality slips, and fades, so too can a sense of self, of morality, mortality. One must have the upmost caution in these times, for, once the way is lost, it can be most difficult to find again.

-----

He couldn't breathe. He couldn't think. All he could do was arch away from the pain, to struggle with the bonds around his wrists, the bonds forcing his arms above his head and leaving nothing but his toes touching the stone floor. Below his feet, he could feel the icy floor turning warm, wet... moistened by his own blood. 

Again, and again, the pain seared into his back, slicing into his bare body, tearing his skin away sliver by sliver. Somewhere, in the distance, through the haze and cloud of his mind, he could hear his father.... The words were lost, though, as Adrian's screams drown out everything else.

-----

Time... what was time? When had it started? When would it end?

Would it ever end?

Days, months.... It was impossible to tell as Adrian's conscious slipped in and out, his mind's last effort to protect itself. Always pain. Nowhere to run to, no way to escape the torture being inflicted upon his limp and lifeless body. 

Again and again, his scattered and fragmented shards of thought wondered if he was as close to death as he felt he surely was. Would they let him die? Would they release the tethers, and allow him some form of comfort as he curled around his own beaten and abused body as life left him?

Surely not. After all, what fun would it be to let their prisoner die, when his screams were so amusing?

Time had stopped...but Adrian was sure the pain never would. The only end would be the insanity of a lost, broken mind. Maybe, eventually, he would go crazy enough to no longer feel the pain.

-----

It was always dark. Ahead of him, somewhere, he could see tiny pinpoints of light. A hall, he guessed, in the few moments of sanity he could still recall. A hall beyond the cavernous area, the sheer stone room seemingly carved out of the earth. Far below the surface, far below even the underground city. The walls... were damp. Was it blood?

He couldn't recall.

-----

Slowly, so slowly, the mind-searing pain subsided. The whip still touched his back, still tore through his pale skin, but the pain.... the pain could no longer hold him. For an instant, he was glad to be rid of it. 

He was in error.

A hunger, deep, insatiable, begin to take him. As he watched through clouded eyes as his blood stained the floor beneath him, his body began to burn with a desire stronger than he had ever known. Day after day, it grew stronger, more consuming. It was a hunger that should have scared him, terrified him, made him long once more for the pain he had endured for so long....

But he was no longer there. Adrian was gone; he had been replaced by the hunger, the desperate need of someone lingering on the verge of death. It made him ache, made him yearn for the one thing he had been deprived of. He needed it, and he needed it now. It didn't matter how he got it, or to whom the life belonged that he would inevitably have to destroy to obtain what his body craved. All he knew was that he needed it, that his body hurt for it.

Savage, primal rage took him as the last traces of humanity disappeared into nonexistence.

The thirst consumed him.

He needed to feed.

-----

With eyes re-purposed, he took in the room around him. To his side, up somewhere on a balcony, someone was watching him. Behind, the pedestal used by the ones who abused him, who wove mark upon mark into his flesh, who chased away his sanity with a sadistic fascination. 

Above him, the chain securing his wrists, suspending him from the towering ceiling. In front of him... those infuriating lights. Just out of reach... just beyond him.

But now those lights flickered. Someone...was coming.

From behind the ever present shadows, a figure stepped forward, with an unpurposeful gait. Gone now was the cloak that had shrouded his face, and a look of bemused satisfaction was written clearly across his plain features.

This was the man who had taken it all away.

The creature hanging above the basin of blood simply watched the man with a serene calm.

A thousand thoughts might have come to him. Who was this man? What was his name? His purpose? His ultimate goal in the charade playing out before him? All of these things might have terrified him, made him question as to whether he really wanted to know the answers. He might have spoken, or, instead, he might have merely hung his head and accepted the tears that stung his eyes.

Any of these things might have happened to a young man called Adrian, a boy barely begun to taste adulthood; a boy with long, silken white hair and slate grey eyes, with a slender, muscled body and milky skin; a caring and selfless soul whose only flaw had been in his mother's misguided affection.

They might have. But they didn't. Because that man no longer existed.

Instead, the creature merely watched. Waited. 

The creature knew that nothing more could hurt him; his blood had been let until no more flowed. It was gone, as was every trace remnant of his sanity. He wasn't afraid.

The creature knew that he had only to wait, and an opportunity would show itself. A few seconds was all that he would need.

"So, you've finally accepted your fate, then?" The man asked, casually strolling around his prize. "Too bad. I do so enjoy listening to your screams...."

A few more steps, closer....closer. The creature closed his eyes, listening to the gentle echo bouncing off the walls. Waiting....

He didn't have to open his eyes to understand that the man before him was smirking, was slipping the gloves from his hands and staring hungrily at the bare, blood covered body suspended before him. 

"Such a waste, you know. Precious blood, painting the ground.... You want it, don't you? My blood." The stranger chuckled. "It hurts, doesn't it? Not enough blood left in your body to sustain you..."

Two more steps, ever closer.

"That's one of the few ways we can die, you know. Bleed until your body can't heal itself any more. Any...serious...injury sustained afterwards will be lethal. Blood loss itself, however, isn't fatal. How unfortunate for you...."

Again, that grating laugh. The creature wanted nothing more than to wrap his hands around the man's throat, forcing away his life and that infernal laugh. 

Suddenly, the creature felt himself dropping to the ground, the chains above his head lowering. Droplets of blood splashed up his body- his own cold, useless blood, pooled beneath him- as his knees hit the floor. Once more, his hands were jerked above his head, just in time to keep him from falling forward. He hadn't the strength to stay upright on his own.

Another step. Just how close would his tormentor get?

"So close..." Came the whisper, the hot breath on his ear. "So close, and you haven't even the strength to lift your head. How pathetic."

A dark, psychotic laugh finally broke through, the creature unable to contain his mirth any longer. The stranger had taken one step too close.

With nothing but a sheer will to survive, the creature lept to his feet, knocking his captor off his feet and into the pool of blood. In a fraction of a second, the man had pushed himself up and lunged, away from the creature.

The creature screamed. Their encounter would not end so quickly. He had waited far too long for this. Primal instincts consumed him as he caught the man around the neck and dragged him back. He had only one chance; if the man escaped his reach, the few feet now afforded by his bonds, he would never be free. 

He wasn't going to let that happen.

Elongated canines tore through the neck of his prey, filling his mouth with the substance his body so desperately needed. The man screamed and struggled, fighting back as best he could against the grip he was locked into. The creature wouldn't have it. 

Blood splashed across the floor and soaked the creature's chest as he dug his fingernails into the back of the struggling man. Over and over, digging deeper, until he forced his hand under the skin and deep within the stranger's chest. 

With one final, blood-choked scream, the stranger collapsed; his heart, torn from his chest, still beating frantically in the hand of the creature.