Promises Made In Your Sleep
((An in character alternate ending, ~2000 words. Warning: severe self harm and blood drinking (consensual and not so)))
Journal of Mina Harker ; November 8, Constanta, Roumania
“Once more dear. Until you are stronger I will continue to provide for you”, Jonathan insisted as he removed his watch and placed it carefully on the table.
Just one more time. It was always one more time. Another addition to the secret we had kept since early October that kept compounding, my guilt accruing interest. I would move food around a plate and drink tea during the day to avoid suspicions of further change and would take small amounts of blood from him at night. This had been happening for nearly a month and I was not sure how much longer we could last. It was his idea in the beginning, he just wanted to help me, but lord did I become addicted. The energy and the few beats of our hearts as one in those moments felt like all I had left for myself. The intense pleasure was impossible to deny. I feigned resistance every time he offered his wrist or throat to me but we both knew it was in vain. It was a formality at that point, a sick ritual twisted to feel almost polite.
“No, my love, this want is a force of habit now. I need nothing but time with you in pure humanity”, I whispered to him as I lowered my head to meet his now extended arm, the hypocrite that I was.
A habit? It made no sense and we both knew it. This should have been over and yet it wasn't. His wrists and throat were dotted with tiny scars but I was careful enough they were near unnoticeable. A small sign of respect for him in such a disgusting act. Only if you looked very close, only if you ran your fingers along them, could you witness the pain of two freezing people. I wonder if they will be permanent, if the same wound opened again and again never quite closes. Nevertheless, he still regarded me with so much love. So he gave and I took. He tasted bitter but not in an entirely unpleasant way. I could taste whatever was in the old flask the men passed around earlier and I was glad I did not partake. I pulled away from him and all was well again. We could go back to pretending we were in love in all the average healthy ways.
That is when Jack joined us. He was no longer crying but he still spoke softer than normal and looked shaken. We sat down and took out a pack of cards. Jack was dealing as usual and I felt what he wanted to say even though he bit his tongue. Survivors guilt is a noun, the bone deep guilt one feels after surviving a tragic event others did not. His friend died in the snow and in some twisted way he felt guilty for it. Quincey was such a good man, a shame out of all of us he suffered a fatal blow. It really should have been me, damned as I am, but it must be some comfort to us that the poor fellow is in heaven. We finished the game with little fanfare. I do not remember who won but I suppose that doesn't matter. It was a small distraction. Card games are for happier folk than us. We went through the motions of celebration but little did we feel it. Lord Godalming also seemed shaken by grief that night, he after all was returning home to no father and no wife. There was a victory, yes, but at what cost? Quincey had looked up at me in the end, he said I was worth fighting for, but a faded scar remains in hash lighting.
After the game I was feeling quite odd and unwell so I excused myself to the washroom. It was a shaky little space and there was nothing but a basin, bucket, and small mirror to serve the men’s shaving and the women’s vanity as they approached the city. It was shaking from the movement of the train which made me feel quite ill. Jonathan ran in after me and held my hair back as I hurled only blood and bile into the basin. God, it was awful. I must have swooned for everything was blurry until he shook me and my head shot up to face the mirror. I thought there was something wrong with it for a moment. I suppose my thoughts were blurred and I had forgotten the facts of the matter but now it was crystal clear before us, only Jonathan cast any reflection. I stood in front, tall as him if not taller, and yet he was the only figure visible in the pristine glass. We stood there in still silence for a moment, processing I suppose, until he gently wrapped his arms around me.
I have no idea why he did such a thing or made any of the decisions he did tonight for that matter. I was newly a vampire, had he not read about Lucy? Had he forgotten everything or did he simply not care? He needed to get away from me, run and tell the others, dig a stake out of a bag, find a knife, find a gun, anything. He should have done anything but stand there and hug me, bringing his pulse so close to where mine had just been. It made me feel the absence. I had to fill it. I turned around and bit down hard. It was instinct. I wasn’t in my right mind. I was suddenly starving. The strongest sense of urgency surged through me as I thrust myself upon him and the relief as his blood rushed into me was like nothing I have felt before. He yelped at the sudden sting but quieted quickly. It must have felt new to him, compared to the drops I had taken before it must have felt like he was being drained of all he had. Something human tugged at the corners of my mind but the animal won and I kept drinking, sinking father into him. Drifting, falling. Then I heard footsteps running toward the washroom and it brought me back to reality, something I thought impossible for such a fiend as I now was.
Jack burst into the room stake in hand and I jumped away from Jonathan. My ever protective husband, with blood still dying his shirt a bright crimson, stepped in front of me blocking the doctor’s advance. I cannot imagine what we looked like at that moment, both of us covered in one’s blood, but it must have been gruesome enough to give even a brave man pause. In Jack’s flinch Jonathan dashed toward him and attempted to twist the stake out of his hand. Through the ruffling and grunts of their subsequent struggle came a cracking sound and an ear piercing scream. The stake dropped to the floor and Jack stumbled backward shaking with shock and pain looking down at his obviously fractured wrist.
Time slowed as I watched Jonathan stare at his own brutality. He turned to me and his eyes were no longer cold, no, he suddenly held a great flame. He grabbed my hair and kissed me near violently. I was stunned. Why? Why? He bit down on my tongue hard enough to draw blood. My blood tasted different now, sickeningly sweet and slower flowing like syrup. It reminded me of His blood being forced upon me. The night I had no choice but to suffocate or swallow. Oh. That was my love’s mad method of exchange, he was making good on his vow to join me in undeath. He was creating his own life after life for us to share.
After one painfully sweet moment, I saw Arthur and Van Helsing approach Jack. Thank the lord they were so nice for it gave me time to alert Jonathan and push him off of me. His breathing was ragged and his teeth were sharpening. It was not enough, it was too slow. Turning took me and Lucy a long time after ingesting the cursed blood and if his sudden want for immortality was true, the change would need to be fast.
Everything began to move faster, and I made my decision, if Jonathan was hell bent on surviving then I would be too. Vampiric strength coursed through me and when Van Helsing turned and lunged for me he made a grave mistake, he forgot there was strength in my hands. I pushed him away before he could reach me with the point of his weapon and he hit the ground hard. Arthur looked petrified as Jack yelled at him to do something. He bent to grab the stake Jack had dropped but it was already in Jonathan’s hands. Jonathan smiled as a madman might as he raised the stake and impaled himself in the gut. Everyone froze as he crumpled to the ground. I ran to kneel beside him. What could I do? I could not work fast enough to heal him from such an injury, this would kill him.
I felt him convulse under me and knew it was over. I put my arms around him and cried. If the men staked me now, so be it. There was no life worth living for me without Jonathan, yet he turned to meet my gaze and gave me a look. The look that said trust me. He doubled over and made a strange sound that sounded almost like laughter as I felt him get colder to the touch. Laughter? He looked up at the other men and they went paler than him. He then faced me with eyes that flashed red and teeth now sharp enough to pierce flesh. It was a sick kind of brilliance he displayed, he had changed in a matter of minutes. He pulled the stake from himself and the wound healed. He wielded the gory stake like his knife raised against the count, daring anyone to come near us.
Then the world halted and bounced back like an elastic, pushing us all off balance. The train had pulled into a station. I grabbed Jonathan’s hand and pulled him out of that damned washroom and ran toward the exit. We were getting off this god damned train and if the men tried to follow us that would be their own suicidal mistake. I knew what feelings now took over my husband and did not want him to do anything he would regret to the few living people we still held dear. We could take a different train home. Home? Arthur interrupted the thought by making a pass at Jonathan with something sharp as we went by, correctly surmising he was the most dangerous. I bared my teeth in warning and he backed off. I managed to grab our bags as I pulled Jonathan through the train doors and into the night. Thank the lord for this strength.
I took a deep breath after leaping from the train. I had no idea where we were yet I could smell a sea breeze, a familiar scent that brought me back to happier times. It brought me back to Lucy. God if she could see me now. If they didn’t kill her we could be together forever by the sea, Jonathan too, the two people I loved most in my life with me forever. This is a selfish desire, she is far better off dead and we would be too. Jonathan and I ran through the night, a small city surrounding us and a few thousand heart beats pounding in our ears. Suddenly he stopped and turned back to me with that pure animalistic hunger in his eyes.
We found an alley and a drunken man. He tried to say something about my beauty and Jonathan took his flirting as an excuse to all but rip his throat out. Poor fellow, we left him with no idea whether he would survive. Jonathan certainly didn’t care. Not in the moment.
We then found a hotel and a few coins in our pockets. We must have looked crazed covered in as much blood as we were, but paying for a room and a half seemed to work just fine.
We got into the small chambers and changed to unsoiled night clothes. Now I sit in a chair in the corner, it is big and soft, and the act of recounting the night feels too normal. The act of writing in shorthand as I am is too human. I feel more than I thought I would dead. I wonder if the Count felt this much, the living emotions clashing with the dead man’s hunger. Real guilt. It does not matter, Jonathan is beckoning me to join him in our bed now so I must cease my journalling. We are closing the curtains and plan to sleep through the day if we are able. Tomorrow night we will start to find our way home whatever that means. I suppose it must be native soil at least. I suppose we shall be the terrors of England now. No. Maybe. We shall have to figure that out.
Goodnight friends, Mina
((If you would like some form of continuation please let me know. I’ll write a whole book! Wait, don't let me do that, I don’t have the time. Expect at least one more chapter though. I can’t help myself.))