1

Dracula was still making memories sitting on the temporary substitute for his throne, namely Justin's couch, and he really didn't like where this was going. The defeat that had put him to sleep for a thousand years for the first time in his long existence was beginning to seem nowhere near as epic and climactic as he had first suspected.

In other words, he was getting mad as hell.

"Justin, make me something to eat," he demanded, one hand thoughtfully under his chin and trying not to pay attention to the succession of stupid things they were showing on that thing called television.

"What, my lord?"

"Anything, it's not like I expect you to be a top-notch chef."

Justin stepped over the unconscious and nearly blood-drained bodies of his friends to get to the kitchen. He heard him opening a door and for exactly two milliseconds wondered if he didn't intend to escape, but then realized it was stupid. What was he going to do, rat him out, which he couldn't? Wander around alone until the first passing vampire hunter caught the newbie and skewered him with a stake? He needed him.

"Uh, there's only pizza in the fridge."

He didn't know what a fridge was, but that wasn't what intrigued him.

"What's pizza?"

"Well, flatbread with... in this case, lots of cheese."

Dracula arched an eyebrow. It didn't sound very appetizing, but if that was all there was, he'd settle for the time being. The only thing that really filled him up was blood, but that didn't mean he couldn't enjoy human food, just that it was more of a pastime for him rather than something he needed to keep living.

Although that sounded like he didn't think drinking blood was a good pastime. It was a hell of a lot of fun.

Almost as much fun as impaling people so deep that the wooden stick went up their ass and out their mouth, and then leaving their corpses as decorations on the walls of his castle.

Justin brought him that pizza on a plate. Well, at least it smelled good.

"You forgot the silverware," Dracula said calmly.

"You usually eat it with your hands. My lord."

"Oh, I see. It's not very refined, but you humans have done worse. Might as well..." Dracula shrugged and picked up the flattened circular bread and took a good bite.

It tasted even better than it smelled. About ten times better.

He couldn't help but think: Where has this been all my life?

"Well done, servant."

And he went on eating with great gusto, but he didn't forget about his little trip down memory lane, no sir. That had to continue.

2

He lost track of the original about a minute after he and the clones started fighting. Fortunately it also didn't take him too long to find a method of discovering which one was the original. That is, the process of elimination.

When he hit one of those clones hard enough it fell apart as if it were a salt statue whose remains were blown away by the wind, disappearing forever.

He would know which one was the original when he did the same to one of the Jonathan's and instead of falling apart lay on the ground, coughing and drowning in his own blood. Which was always a clear message that the dude was dying and he'd caught him, but his clones just had to complicate things. Anyway, better complications than boredom.

Dracula jumped twenty meters above the ground and the armies that kept hitting each other to dodge an attack, an energy whip that had shot out after him, only to discover that the original and all his clones could jump at least twenty meters as well and maybe even more. So he ran out of room to dodge and the energy whip sent him back to the ground with a loud bang and a crater the size of his body on the ground. He could have transformed into many things to avoid it, but he didn't have time.

He thought: I'd better not have jumped.

He thought: Oh, my back!

Anyone would have their aches and pains after years of prolonged existence, whether they wanted it or not.

By which he meant existing, of course.

With aches and pains there wasn't much ambiguity. Not even the dumbest lunatic would want them.

The clones fell swiftly upon him, unwilling to give him even a moment to breathe. Dracula didn't intend to let him get his way twice in a row, so he picked himself up off the ground just enough to get back to it and dodge the impact by rolling away. Then he had to dodge the landing of the other two, who changed their trajectory in mid-air to see if they could crush him on impact.

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After that, fortunately, he had time to stand up and dust himself off.

He already had enough of rolling around on the ground. It wasn't very dignified, so he should get serious and get this over with as soon as possible. So that it wouldn't happen again.

Two Jonathan's jumped on him. Dracula quickly disposed of them, killing them with the sword and discovering that they were both clones. Unfortunately, by disposing of them so close they momentarily blinded him and left him coughing as if he were choking.

Momentarily.

Only momentarily, but it was enough. The next moment he felt the enemy's spear slipping between his ribs, reaching all the way to his heart.

"Really?" Dracula said, falling to his knees, not knowing that a thousand years later, as he remembered this moment, he would think exactly the same thing.

But how could he not?

It wasn't anticlimactic just because it wasn't the climax, how could just a little hole in the heart stop him? Dracula placed a hand on the spear, stained with his own blood for a change, and yanked back as Jonathan kept trying to push it further in.

But he won the struggle with no trouble and extracted the weapon from his body.

He staggered as soon as he succeeded, though. He was already on his knees, but if he had been careless he would have ended up biting the dust quite literally. And not even on purpose, which would have been especially humiliating, just out of.... weakness. Yuck.

Good thing that, in the hypothetical event that had happened, his subjects would have been too busy getting slaughtered to see him in that state.

Wait, that didn't have a fucking upside.

The only silver lining was that he finally knew which one of those bastards was the real one. The only one left standing, the one who had speared him through the heart. The one who had made his legs tremble and spit blood.

The darkness of the night deepened around him, until he was just two angry red eyes floating in a sea of darkness. Jonathan looked intimidated, but unlike the cowards who had accompanied him this far he wasn't the type to leave all the hard work to others.

Instead of hiding behind anyone, he took a step forward into the unfathomable darkness of which Dracula formed the center.

"Even if I fall today, others will rise up against you. Humanity will never let you do as you please with it. We aren't toys!"

"It is true," Dracula answered slowly and after a while. "You are no toy. You are a warrior."

He had exceeded his already high expectations, being the first in quite some time to allow humanity to knock on his door, so to speak. So he would treat him with the respect he deserved.

Jonathan Van Hellsing stepped fearlessly into the darkness.

The clash of weapons echoed beyond the darkness to the torn battlefield and the burning castle.

They were evenly matched, but that wasn't to his advantage.

Dracula felt impatient.

The enemy he had to defeat quickly was one that would be difficult to beat even without time constraints. What was that time constraint? The one dictated by the hole in his heart, of course.

He could move and keep fighting even with such a large hole in his heart, but he was still a living creature. More to the point, he was a vampire. He needed blood to keep functioning, even if he couldn't really die, the hole in his heart had set in motion the countdown to his defeat.

Normally, fixing even such a serious wound should be a piece of cake. He just needed human blood to speed up his body's natural regeneration, to make him more powerful, faster, better even than before he got a hole in his heart.

But he wasn't capable.

There was the problem, he simply wasn't able to reach him. Their weapons clashed, causing a shower of sparks between them, parted and crossed again.

Dracula even grazed Jonathan's spear more than once with his sharp nails, on one occasion he came close to tearing his neck, but in any case nowhere near to sinking his teeth into him, which was what he really wanted to do.

Fuck.

He was the biggest slippery bastard he'd had the dubious pleasure of facing off against in a long time, at least among what he remembered. When you lived so long large portions of your life where empires rose and fell were like waking up on a Sunday with a hangover for a normal human being. In other words, a real, fuzzy headache.

Fuck.

The fight moved quite naturally from the battlefield to the castle walls when they jumped over there at the same time, as if they had come to an agreement. But the only thing that had changed was the environment, the fight continued to develop in the same way. That is, it didn't develop.

Dracula was trying to cut his dancing partner open like a pig, but the slippery bastard was getting away again and again. He wasn't managing to hit him either, but Jonathan really didn't need to, he'd already landed a good hit and now he just had to watch him bleed out. Dracula could retreat with his tail between his legs, to drink a human that was easier to catch, but first of all that wouldn't speak very well of his sportsmanship and it would also be pretty lame.

He'd decided to take him seriously finally, but what he'd do would be to turn around and run away? Ha, no thanks.

The battlefield changed again, this time by complete accident, they knocked down one of the castle walls and fell inside, in the middle of a fight between one of his creatures (specifically, though it didn't matter, a three-headed gorgon) and half a dozen knights. Plus the corpses of their companions scattered around, who were now just a hazard they could stumble into.

None of that had anything to do with them, in any case. Except that the gorgon might lend him a hand once she'd dealt with the moronic knights of the church, but things didn't get to that point.

On account of Jonathan defeating him first. By attrition, not because he had surpassed him in strength or intelligence. He wore him down, his clones appeared again to crucify him with their spears, and then the original delivered the coup de grace.

3

And thus he was defeated. It was a worthy and just defeat, of which he had nothing to be ashamed of, fortunately. But the trip down memory lane had been of no use. He could only remember the fight because afterwards he had been too busy being basically dead, floating between life and death. So he couldn't remember the important stuff. He didn't.

"The flashback didn't help, but this pizza," he took another good bite, "this pizza is so delicious I guess it's worth it. Who's the closest pizza maker, vassal?"

"Uh, there's a pizzeria down the street."

"Pizzeria... Places where they make pizzas? Excellent. Maybe the modern age isn't so bad."

Maybe about ten minutes later (he conscientiously finished the pizza, of course, not a speck of cheese left, even licked the plate) Joachim, from the pizzeria across the street, received his last customer.

Not of the day. Of the rest of his life.

The Prince of Darkness Walking Down Fifth Avenue (7): END