~Dead Meat~

I watched as Angelica walked away.  Date?  Me?  No.  I felt sorry for the poor soul who she dragged to me.  Then I thought about it.
Free lunch.  I could enjoy having this human around.
The rules were in place.  I returned home to my brothers, glad that I had come out of the meet fairly unharmed.  Perhaps my ego had been wounded from asking her to "mentor" me.  It was more to make her comfortable than an actual offer.  However, there was the fear that she would run with it.  What do I care anyway?  She was merely mortal while I had little chance of ever being destroyed.
As I entered our apartment building, I was greeted by Edmund.  Well, not so much greeted as assaulted.
"Where have you been?" he asked quickly.  "Master has been asking for you for an hour."
"Bugger off, Ed.  I'm on my way."
And I was.  I walked up two flights of stairs, taking my time specifically to get the Master mad at me.  I am simply a sucker for punishment and always have been.  Outside the door to the apartment where the Master stayed, I saw Al sucking at a blood bag contentedly.  I made a face like I was going to be sick.
"It's not so bad once you get used to it," he hummed.
I rolled my eyes and entered the Master's chambers.
It was dark inside, but with our ultraviolet vision it made little difference.  I saw him sitting in a large armchair from his Transylvania home, petting a large grey cat.  It looked up at me with menacing eyes and hissed.  The Master chuckled and continued to stroke the cat.  I bent down on one knee.
"You wanted to see me, my Master?"
"Yez," sighed the Count in his thick accent.  It was slowly becoming more American, but after four-hundred years, it could be better.  "I vant to know more about zis gerl you see zo much deez days.  Eez she…"
"No, Master!" I declared.  "I would never think such a thing.  Not of that idiot."
The gray monster on his lap glared at me.  I held my gaze.
"I zee.  Vell, den.  What are you doing vith her?"
I told him of my plan to get close to the human girl, to lure her into a false sense of comfort as my mentor, and to become more modern.
It feels so wrong to say that.
My Master waited patiently, only nodding and occasionally sipping at a glass of blood that he had stored from a previous kill.  I thought of all the stories he had told us of the boat trip to America and shivered at the idea of it.  After all, rats are not as delicious as humans in the best of times.  I wondered if he would ever go through such torture again.
When I finished, I waited silently.
"Eez dis all?"
I thought a moment before whispering, "No, Master.  There was another thing."
"Vell?"
I pulled the note that I had received two nights ago and held it up to him.  He leaned forward slightly, forcing the enormous cat off of his lap, and took it from me.  Gently and curiously, he unfolded the paper.  I watched as his confused face turned to shock, then anger.
"Who gave you dis?" he snarled.
I shrank back.
"I- do not know, Master."
"Send in my son.  Leave me."
I obeyed quickly.  Outside the door, I told Alucard of the events that had transpired, and he, too, became shocked and told me to rest as he did as his father commanded.
Worried, I returned to my own room on the second floor.  I looked around my own barren home.  The bareness of it was painful.  I walked slowly to my bedroom and looked down at my coffin.  I slipped inside and fell peacefully asleep.
I woke up still inside the dark comfort of my resting place.  I effortlessly pushed the lid off, finding myself not in the hazy purple darkness, but instead a true black.
Panic filled me as I tried to blink away my vision loss.  In a final effort, I even rubbed at them furiously.  It was all for nothing in the end.  I growled angrily and felt around the edge of my casket.  I raised myself to one edge and slipped onto the floor.
That is, I would have, had there been a floor.  I fell into darkness, fighting to yell out, but I was unable.  It never stopped.  There was only the constant sensation of the bottomless abyss that I had found myself in.
"Desmond."
I turned my head wildly to find the source of the voice, but knew only the darkness.  Then, a jerking stop, a blinding light, and deafening thud filled my senses.  This time, I was really awake.
I threw the lid off of my coffin this time, slamming it against the near wall.  I heard it crack under the pressure.  I pushed myself up and accidentally toppled the box off of its stand.  The racket could have woken the dead, no pun intended.  As it was, I had to get out.  I had to distract myself.  I opened the door to the hall and nearly ran over Nickolas.  I staggered back, partly from the force at which I had hit him and partly from the remaining shock of my dream.
"Brother Desmond," he sighed, "I heard something.  Are you alright?"
I looked him right in the eye and asked, "Do you dream?"
He scrunched his eyebrows together and cocked his head to one side.
"Dream, brother?  Never.  It is atypical of our kind."
"I see," I whispered.  "I need air."
I moved past him, but he followed after.
"Why, do you do so often?"
I shook my head.  "This is the first of such a thing for me."
Nickolas put a hand to his chin thoughtfully, then sighed, "This is disturbing."
"Huh?"
"Well," Nickolas said while we walked, "if you are dreaming, then it is likely that you are not truly asleep.  Is there something that might be keeping you awake and alert?"
I glanced around nervously.
"What is it, my brother?"
I softly told him, "I think that someone is following me, Brother.  Also, there is a human who will not leave me alone.  I am, well, nervous.  For our family."
He touched my shoulder softly.
"You need to calm yourself.  You do your nerves no good for worry.  You are stronger when centered and rested," he explained to me.
I nodded, though did not take his words to heart.  I wanted to, but there was something about the situation that did not add up.
After all, how many times in the past millennia had someone managed to upset Dracula?

Author's Note

Please respond! Written by co-author. For past and future chapters I forget to give credit to my co-author, I'll make it simple. She does the even chapters, I do the odd chapters.