Eternal Night

(I) Chapter 39: Revelation

Nosferatu rarely dreamed, which is why Frankie understood that the visions passing before her mind's eye were merely figments of her imagination, mingled with memories of an age long since passed. It had been three and a half centuries since that night, yet how amazed she was that her brain was able to so easily conjure the details of the evening – the dancers, the music, the scent of the canal wafting through the air.

She knew this scene – knew it well, though she hadn't thought on it in years. She was dreaming of Venice. The year – 1763. The night she had first met the dragon.

Frankie walked undetected through the dreamscape for some time, finding her brother, her cousin, a couple of old friends. But the scene that proved the most captivating to her was the one that caught her attention from across the dance floor. There she was, donning a stunning dark indigo blue gown, dancing with none other than Vladislaus Drăculea himself.

She watched as he – with her hand in his – took a few steps backwards, drawing her back to him for another dance. There had been a certain grace to the dip of his wrist, an elegance to the way he supported her fingers in the valley of his palm – restrained, almost reverential. It had made her feel special.

Everything he had done that night had made her feel special.

Frankie observed from the sidelines as they danced their final number together – the allemande – a beautiful sensuality to their movements that she had never really taken the time to appreciate before. He whirled her through the dancers, her steps matching his as if they had been partnered for years, centuries, even – an ideal companion.

Her soul's perfect match.

But why then did she run from him when the dance was done?

The recollection was clear as she watched herself dash across the room before vanishing in the shadows, the man chasing after her.

She had been afraid... afraid of what he made her feel.

The Frankie of old had been quite different from the woman she was now, and yet how strange it was that those feelings were very much the same as they had ever been.

She followed her memory of Vladislaus through the dreamscape like a shadow, witnessing the way he called out the false name she had given him, how he searched with a genuine sense of frantic desperation and it made her wonder – had he felt it too?

The longing, that inexplicable pull, that aching in his soul...

She certainly had that night and it had terrified her.

For twenty years up until that evening, her maker and tutor, Eduardo de Meirás, had managed to instill in her an unquenchable need for utter dominance over all. He had molded her into the ultimate femme fatale, nurturing her sense of independence and control and it had become her armor.

But after a mere handful of dances with Dracula, she had found herself questioning everything.

Which is why, as Frankie witnessed once more in the dreamscape, she had emerged from the shadows of her hiding place to pursue the man who had so effortlessly disarmed her. She had needed to be sure that what she had felt wasn't her imagination. As she observed the memory of their first and only kiss, those feelings were confirmed then just as they were now. That uncertainty, that fear of relinquishing control – of losing her armor, the way he so effortlessly stripped it from her with every whisper and caress and bold taste of tongue.

Frankie recognized that feeling in her, remembered it with sudden clarity – how torn she had been then... and how reminiscent it was of how torn she had been these last few months. Like a frightened rabbit in a desperate need to escape a wolf, she had run from Dracula once again that evening, this time for good – leaving him unconscious in the night.