THIRTY-FIVE
Dracula lived.
Well, in a manner of speaking.
Pinned down on it, Geordie clarified that he wasn’t certain the Impaler Prince was even really a person, anymore, so much as a presence, or an aura, or an imprint. A memory. His spirit had been shorn from his body, but he had done so much damage to his own soul over the centuries that what remained could not even properly be called a ghost. It was merely a vaguely Dracula-shaped malevolence.
Dracula had, rather short-sightedly, bound his dark power up in flesh and blood—mostly blood—and, having neither, anymore, was rather short on power, as well. He existed, still. He might one day return. But his present state was no threat to anybody.
That which attacked us, then, could not be Dracula. It might be an admirer, a copycat, but
