One thing has puzzled me since reading Bram Stoker's book about Vladimir, why did he use Dr. Abraham Van Helsing as Dracula's nemesis? I mean, Vlad knew I had killed Van Helsing decades earlier. I could only guess that Vladimir was using Artistic license by directing Bram Stoker to use Van Helsing as the bad guy. Although, now I'm starting to wonder whether Bram Stoker is simply a suedaname and that Vladimir actually wrote the book himself.

I also believe that my son, Abe, had kept true to his word. That he would return with the intention of re-killing us. It seems likely to me now, that Abe had followed Vladimir to England, in an attempt to destroy him. Maybe he succeeded and that's why Vladimir has been missing all these years. But that doesn't explain Abe's corpse in the crate either. I just don't know?

Abe must have taken on his biological father's full name and become the now immortalized Vampire Hunter in Bram Stokers, Dracula. There were so many unanswered questions and only one person who could answer them all, Vladimir.

Like my drones, I was restless, and although I had only been parted from my beautiful Noreen for one night, I felt the beat of her heart call out to me from a distance. Now that my new abode was being taken care of and my precious homeland soil and the body of my dear son were safe, there was no longer any reason to postpone my travel to Whitby. I must go and find Vladimir once and for all.

Now that the following night had fallen, I quickly ushered my velvet friends out into the dark chilly sky. Out in front of the house, all along the cobbled street, tall black gas lamps cast down their tainted yellow light into sickly pools.

Standing in one of those pools of light, I extended out my arms, my hands turned upwards and curled back my fingers until my Long sharp nails cut into the palms of my hands, drawing blood. A deep rumble rose up from my throat, so powerful that windows all around shook as if the very buildings they hung, quaked in fear. My lips peeled back to reveal my needle-like fangs and the depths of my throat, from which emitted the roar of my Summons.

"Creatures of the night, your master is before you, is summoning you. Come forth into the open, into the arms of your Prince. Come, be with me, come and be meeeeee!"

Creatures that had hidden from the light of day, crawled free from the cracks and crevices of stone and brick. From gaps in the pavement and surrounding buildings. Creatures that had lived their entire lives below ground, below the feet of the day walkers. They found their way up through the marsh, through the stink of sewers and through the gutter grates. creatures crept, crawled and slunk around my feet. Spiders and all things small began to rise up my legs, over my knees and onto my abdomen. A sea of them covered every inch of me and they continued to rise.

A commotion of rats erupted up from the sewer. A gray and black river of wet and fetid fur scampered up and over the writhing, crawling sea. They too began to climb up my body until each perched themselves along my arms, on my shoulders and my head. Every inch of my cold still form was covered by the very creatures I had called forth and beneath that cloak, I too, became as they.

Like a magician's cloak being whipped away to reveal the disappearance of an assistant, I too disappeared. My living cloak collapsed back into a thousand night crawlers and crept away to the safety of the deep and dark places whence they came.

I became a black silhouette, a cloud of small flapping wings that took to the night sky and flew upwards to mingle with my new and loyal drones. The thing about transforming into another creature, especially a group of creatures in one go, is that your mind has to constantly fight against the natural urges of said creature. Bats were altogether more difficult, as your mind is split many times over, fractured, you might say.

It would be a battle of all my individual wills, to stay as one.

And so, as I flew over the river Humber, heading north along the coastline, most of my remaining energy was directed to the task of adhesion of the group. It soon became apparent, though, that if I wanted to reach my goal of Whitby, I must take on fuel. The in-flight meal needed to be served very soon.

One other thing about transforming into a bunch of lesser creature is the threat from predators. Yes, you are quite right, vampires are at the top of the food chain regardless of what the Lycanthropes would have you believe, mutts! But you have to understand that splitting oneself into many parts will inevitably weaken the whole. So whilst I am in the state of fracture, the individual parts of me are at risk from the lesser ranks. Cats are especially dangerous. Luckily, they abstain from flight.

Only twice have I ever fallen foul to predators. Once, having just finished my fill of a particularly beautiful virgin in the town of Wensk in Romania, a rather distraught father burst into said virgins bedroom and caught me mid flight out of the window. I received a blast from his shotgun. On arrival back at my family castle, I discovered that four of my bats had not, in fact, made it. I spent the following week regrowing my left foot.

The other time had been a cat. From out of nowhere it hurtled at my bat formation and nabbed one for its lunch. Later I was relieved to discover that on transforming back to my full Vampiric self, I was fully formed. That is until I excused myself from a banquet Vladimir was holding for local dignitaries. Un-nature was calling. Yes, Dracula's do use the little Vampire's room, where do think all that excess blood goes. Well, let's say I screamed a lot. I stared down at my open trousers and continued to scream and the shock on everyone's face was almost amusing as they piled into the toilet to see what was wrong. But even that grew back in the end, luckily!

Predators aside, our bellies began to rumble. I willed all parts of myself, as well as my drones, to a lower altitude. We hovered just above a canopy of an old Oak tree. The evening was cold as winter, but there was still life flitting about in the tree below. Two by two I dive bombed into the canopy and hunted for lunch.

A Dracula's most famous means of sustenance as we all know is blood, mostly human, but on occasion, we have been known to drink from lower life forms. Tonight though, I did not wish to take the time to land and feast. If I did, I would also want to nap. A siesta would waylay me for longer than I wished. Instead, I took the less usual method. I would refuel on the fly, insects.

Yes! Insects, the amount of useable blood is negligible, but as I was in my bat form, for them it would do. Once my many in flight meals were done, I gave my drones permission to attain sustenance too. The eighty miles to Whitby flew by without incident and as we approached the small seafaring town, I could see the harbor and there upon its tip, was a beautiful lady waiting for me. Her red flowing dress radiated remarkably underneath the silver rays of the moon. My many breaths were taken away. It took all of my fractured willpower to resist the pull of her heart.

I knew I could not go to her, not yet. Transforming into a cloud of bats and flying many miles was draining enough, but once I transformed back, I would be so drained of energy I would be unable to prevent myself from feasting on the nearest source of blood. Even if that blood was my Noreen, I would take all she possessed. And so I circled around in search of a victim.