The first thing Reggie realised was she was cold, the second was she was wet. The first she might have expected in the house of a vampire, the second not so much. Reluctantly she opened her eyes, or at least she tried. There seemed to be something sticking her eyelashes together.

She tried to lift her arm to wipe away whatever it was and discovered pain. The small cry that fell from her lips was completely heartfelt and totally involuntary.

"Thank god, I thought you would never wake up."

Magda sounded just about at the end of her tether.

"Where are we?" Reggie mumbled and tried to move again, this time more slowly.

It still hurt. Luckily one of her eyes popped open without her intervention, although she wasn't sure she was going to have any lashes left. Most things weren't even close to in focus, but she recognised the covered courtyard where the coach had dropped them.

"Outside," Magda said.

The reason for the cold and wet revealed itself as well as the wind whipped some rain over both of them to underline Madga's point.

"Why?"

"You were like a firework," Magda told her, voice increasing in volume, "you were on fire, the room was on fire! What was I supposed to do?"

On balance Reggie decided cold and wet was better than dry and on fire. She hated to think what would have happened if Magda hadn't brought her into the rain. Not that she understood what had happened anyway. It made her head hurt even more than it already did just thinking about it.

That was the moment everything came back to her.

"Dracula," she said, trying to sit up, but Magda wouldn't let her.

"He's over there," Magda said, indicating towards the entrance, "and he's not going anywhere."

"Alive?" Reggie checked.

She could just make out the annoyed look Magda gave her for that one.

"I was there, I am not an idiot, I understood," the werewolf said pointedly.

"Sorry," Reggie apologised.

Another gust of rain did her the favour of washing away whatever was keeping her other eye closed and she peered in the direction Magda had indicated. Dracula was slumped to the left of the door. He looked human and unconscious. She only prayed the cavalry arrived before that changed.

The memory of what she had done was, thankfully dim. She suspected she never wanted to remember what had happened in detail. Even as she thought about it a snarl echoed through her head and she recoiled.

"What?" Magda asked. "What is it?"

She came back to herself clinging to the werewolf.

"Memory," she said, breathing hard, "I think."

Her body felt like it had been broken into pieces and hurriedly stuck back together, but the supernatural power at her core was humming with energy and life. She could actually feel her body healing as it dealt with the damage she had done herself. It was far more efficient than she had ever experienced before.

Magda had said she had been on fire. Fire was deadly to humans and vampires, yet she could feel no burns. She ached, yes. Her muscles did not want to work properly yet, as well, but as she looked down at herself, all that was left of the flames were large holes in her clothes.

"The others will be coming," she said, deciding to worry about what she needed to do rather than what she had just done. "We must secure Dracula."

"I am sure there are things we can use inside," Magda said.

"But the fire..?"

"When you went out, it went out," Magda told her and Reggie felt very slow because she hadn't even looked. "I was about to try and get you back inside when you woke up."

"What about you? Are you okay?" Reggie asked as she realised she hadn't even checked yet.

"I feel like a toddler on a sugar rush, but I am fine," Magda replied as she helped her slowly stand up. "I do not think it was just fire you were giving off. My hands burned, but they healed before I barely had a chance to notice."

Reggie opened her mouth to respond to that, but realised she had no idea what to say. Everything was so far beyond what she had expected that she had no explanation for anything.

"You carry Dracula, then," she decided, "just in case I'm still doing whatever I was doing. We do not want him recovering before we have some of that knock out juice from Division 5. Until we find his army and deal with it, he stays unconscious."

"It would be my pleasure to make sure he has no chance to wake up with manual means if necessary," Magda said and grinned.

Reggie laughed. She still didn't like that she had claimed her very own werewolf, but she was definitely warming to Magda. She sobered quickly though, there was so much to do.

Somewhere Dracula had an undead army that needed destroying. Division 5 would help, but it would undoubtedly be difficult. And speaking of Division 5, Reggie was going to have to apologise to Sorin, who was undoubtedly waking up about then and would be very, very annoyed with her. She didn't completely trust him, but she didn't want him hating her either.

When her family arrived they were going to have to secure the house. She and Magda hadn't seen any staff when arriving with Dracula, but that didn't mean there weren't any nasty surprises waiting inside.

The demonic creature that had started everything was dead. The echo of its roaring rage reverberated through her mind even as she dared think about it again. It felt real and she had to catch herself a second time.

"Reggie?" Madga asked.

"Flashback," she said, doing her best to push it away as she prayed that was all it was.

The enormity of what she had done and the myriad possible consequences threatened to take her breath away, so she refused to think about it.

Dracula was vulnerable now, just like any other vampire. However, what power he had left, what kind of enemy he would make were still unknown quantities. There was nothing left to bring him back from a vampire's end, but that didn't mean he wasn't dangerous.

"Let's get that inside," Reggie said and pointed at Dracula. "We can figure out everything else as we go."

Reggie knew this wasn't quite what she had been supposed to do. Dracula had to die for her to complete her task, but that was impossible at the moment. She'd let Mina figure out what to do next. She had been born an apex predator, something to make vampires fear the dark, but right about then she felt more like a kitten. She'd done her bit, everyone else could deal with the rest.

The End ... or A Beginning

Total Word Count ~20,250

A/N: Many thanks for reading, I very much hope you have enjoyed the story. It has been a pleasure sharing it with you.

This book is now available on Amazon in paperback and Kindle, re-edited with lots of extra content as the first novella in my new series Dracula's Heritage. Check it out at the external link for this chapter.