Chapter 6 – Valtu
Valtu
It has been years since I have last attempted to write in this journal.
It keeps disappearing on me for years at a time, then popping up on a bookshelf or at the bottom of a chest I swore was empty.
Perhaps this book is cursed just as my memories are.
Perhaps it’s controlled by a demon who enjoys fucking with me, letting me live my life with all the pain behind me before making me face it all over again.
I’ve read the book. The Un-Dead , which Mr. Stoker decided to call Dracula in the end.
A silly name. He told me he thinks it means “the Devil” in Romanian, but having lived in Romania for years, he is completely wrong.
Not that he ever sought my opinion after he published the book.
He met with me but once, this time when I happened to be in Dublin.
We had a night together and then parted ways.
He didn’t ask me any more questions about being a vampire, and I didn’t ask him about the book.
It was better that way. I never saw him again.
But the book, my god, the fucking book. He took Mina and Lucy’s names and put them in the book but attributed them to the wrong people, none of them my lovers.
Dracula was given no love story whatsoever.
I was still a count, but the name Valtu Aminoff was nowhere to be found.
He took my tales of living in Eastern Europe in various castles and turned them into pure schlock.
Doctor Van Helsing became a fucking vampire slayer, can you believe it?
At least his name was correct. And who the devil was this Renfield fellow?
I guess the mind of a writer can only do so much with reality.
Stoker never set about to write my story, he wanted to write his own, one in which he was in total control.
He liked to be in control, that Bram, which I abhorred. It never would have worked between us.
But while this journal is in my possession again, I might as well settle down with a brandy and remember what was real and true, before I become Dracula, and Dracula’s story becomes my own.
THE VICTORIAN AGE
London – 1888
“Dreadful day,” Van Helsing said, putting down his newspaper for a moment to glower at the rain on the window, the streets outside filled with the sound of hoofbeats and carriage wheels splashing through dirty puddles.
I reached over for the sugar and dolloped a large amount into my coffee, giving it a stir. “I have a hard time believing you’re not used to this weather.”
He glared at me over his newspaper. “You would think that the rain would agree with me, but I can’t stand it. Can’t stand the sun either.”
“Not many of us can,” I mused, the scent of the coffee overwhelmed me for a moment before I instinctively compartmentalized it. If we didn’t do that on a minute-by-minute basis, we would go insane, the world too rich with sights, sounds and smells.
“Aside from you,” Van Helsing said.
I shrugged. “Sunglasses go a long way.”
“You look ridiculous in those things,” he pointed out.
I shrugged again. “I’ve never cared about looking ridiculous or not. Humans find a way to stare at me at any rate, I might as well give them a reason they understand.”
“The ladies stare at you for reasons I’m sure you understand,” he said grumpily.
“The men do too,” I said with a smile.
He ignored me. “I can only compel them, you seem to have a natural talent, Val.”
That brought out another smile from me. “We can’t all be this handsome, Doctor.”
He grumbled and went back to reading. It was a rather dreadful day, but it seemed to suit his mood just fine.
It was true that I didn’t have an aversion to the sun the way that Helsing and the other vampires did, but I think they didn’t know to ignore it.
The sun didn’t bother our skin much, just our eyes because they were so sensitive, so sunglasses, even though they were a relatively rare thing to see about town, were helpful.
I found something invigorating about the sun, like it gave me energy.
Too much of it for too long and I would become drained, but bursts of it here and there were like a tonic to my soul.
It even helped stave off the hunger and in times that I was trying to be good, I could go for months at a time without feeding if I escaped to the sunny climates of Southern Spain, Italy, Greece, Morocco.
But in London, I had to feed much more often. I felt a pang of hunger just thinking about it and drank down the rest of my coffee to help quell it. It helped for the most part.
“You are looking rather wan,” the doctor said, putting his newspaper down and peering at me. “When was the last time you fed?”
“I’m fine,” I told him dismissively. I didn’t want to think too much about that last time.
I was haunting Whitechapel, the same place that Doctor Helsing often sourced, looking for someone the world wouldn’t miss.
There was a lot of them there, people that could disappear and no one would bat an eye.
It was a sad place, but I told myself that I had to feed in order to survive, that it wasn’t my fault I was born this animal any more than it was probably their fault they were born into poverty.
I told myself that I was doing them a favor and putting them out of their misery.
It helped squash the guilt. Better to be dead than to sell your body on the streets, or so I told myself.
But the last time I fed, my prey fought back.
She was drunk, and old, but still she fought.
She even had a name, Mary Ann, which I cared not to know.
It always made things harder to know their names.
It was why farmers should never name their cattle.
I had to slash her throat and drain her blood that way.
It felt so violent, not in the style of a vampire.
I much preferred to bite and feed, it was the way beasts were meant to.
It was the middle of the night, and after I killed her and fed, I left her body right there on the street in Buck’s Row, disappearing in a flash before anyone could see. I often got carried away during feeding, violence taking over, and if I wasn’t careful, I could become lost in time.
I saw the inquest days later into her death and I could have kicked myself for not being more careful. I should have hidden the body. I shouldn’t have done it on the street.
Not that anyone would ever suspect a Finnish Count of murder, not when I resided in a grand house in Marylebone, when I donated so much of my wealth to the poor and other charities.
Vampires aren’t all bad, not when the money we have invested and saved for a century helps us improve the lives of others—even when we take away those very lives in the end.
But there were no solutions yet. How were we supposed to live without taking human life?
While I have admitted my truth to some humans in the past, the majority became afraid of me, and even if some of them volunteered to be fed on, who would control me?
When a vampire feeds, they lose all control, the bloodlust always getting the better of them.
The only way I think I would be able to feed without killing anyone is to have someone with me who could make me stop.
But would Van Helsing do that? Or would he join in too?
Of course, Van Helsing came up with the best solution—he became a doctor. Now he had access to all the blood he needed, even though he did enjoy the hunt.
“I would be happy to share some vials with you, Val,” he said, picking up on my thoughts as we sometimes do with each other.
“I’m fine,” I said again. Old blood wasn’t the same anyway. I finished the dregs of my coffee and sighed, feeling both weary and restless. “How about we make the most of the weather and go to the British Museum? They have a new exhibit I hear.”
Van Helsing never cared much for going out in public, preferring to spend his days studying medicine or relaxing with a boring book, but he would often accompany me on my outings even when he didn’t feel like it.
While he liked to study the body, I liked to study how people worked.
What made them tick, what made them different from one another.
A museum was a great place to do that. Even when so many people were putting on airs, pretending to be smarter than they were or interested in history and art, I liked to see how they were beneath the masks.
“A new exhibit,” Van Helsing mused, getting to his feet. “New to most humans perhaps. It’s never new to us.” A slight exaggeration, considering there was a lot of history that even us vampires weren’t witness to, but since the doctor was born in the 1400s, I let that slide.
We called for my carriage and trundled off toward the museum, an easy walk most days but I didn’t want to listen to the doctor grumble about the rain ruining his fine clothing. He acted like he didn’t have more wealth than anyone in the city.
The new exhibition turned out to be paintings from the Far East, China and Japan to be specific, located in the white wing. We stepped on through and joined the hordes—seemed everyone in London had the same idea to escape the weather.
As usual, we took our time looking at the Ancient Egyptian artifacts.
Since neither of us were alive back then, their whole society fascinated us.
We often stared at the hieroglyphs and mummies and tombs and wondered who we could have been had we been vampires then.
But with vampires only having come into existence via Skarde, the so-called king of us all, in the twelfth century, our lineages don’t stretch back that far.
Eventually we made our way over to the white wing to see the exhibit. There was a crowd gathered so we took our time waiting to view the paintings, recognizing many people from various parties I’ve either thrown or been to as they milled about.
That’s when I heard her.
This melodic song of a laugh.