Episode 14

Jonathan didn't get very far in his condition.

Not under his own power, at least. He took a few steps forward, but then his body betrayed him. He became dizzy, losing his balance and would have ended up hitting the ground head first, had Elizabeth not caught him in time.

And she had been the one to help him up in the first place. He should have expected this. But it was humiliating, all the same.

Humiliating.

"Easy. You just came back to life, you need time." And that was normal, only on that island the same thing had happened to him, and he'd gotten going quickly.

But more time had passed. Hours, not minutes, now that he thought about it.

Besides...

Back then, he had been able to cling to the hope of finding his treacherous brother to kill him. Now there was nothing within reach. The assassin was dead and all his enemies were far away.

In other words, adrenaline wasn't keeping him on his feet.

Elizabeth helped him over to a piece of rubble where he could sit down.

"You look worried. What's going on, eh? We won."

"That woman blew my head off at the end."

Elizabeth blinked.

"Yeah, you don't have to swear it. I saw your brains and other softer bits scattered all over the place. I also saw it go back where it belonged. I told you that."

Jonathan clicked his tongue.

"Didn't you notice? I told you, at the end, just at the end, but we were fighting for a while."

"Ah, I see where you're going."

"If she could have done that from the beginning, she would have won just by looking. So…« He couldn't stop thinking about it. He had always been bothered by things that didn't make sense.

It was one of the reasons he had become a pirate.

That and he had been born with nothing, so he had no choice but to take everything he lacked into his own hand. Well. That was one of the things that didn't make sense.

There was plenty to go around, but there were people who lacked the basics... and people who had too much. He wasn't a hero, never was, never would be. But that... How could it not bother him?

"The simplest answer is usually the right one," Elizabeth said.

"And what the hell does that mean?

"If she could have done if she could, then she couldn't, not all along. Before you say anything... I don't know why she couldn't and in the end she did, how the fuck should I know? Maybe she had to charge her skill somehow, or maybe on the brink of death her Unique Skill upgraded, a last desperate attempt of her soul to save herself. Maybe... But speculation is useless. She is dead and you are alive. And you won't have to face her again."

It made sense.

He couldn't deny that it made sense.

Yet he couldn't accept it. He couldn't accept not having an answer.

Jonathan looked at the corpse of the assassin, not that far away from them. She wasn't in much better shape than how he should have been after she blew his head off. Of course, the shadow armor had died with her. Now she was nothing more than the blood covered corpse of a young girl.

So what, how many have I killed, just in the last year? Old, young, even children. How many have I killed?

Not to mention my own family.

"There's also another simple answer."

Elizabeth put her hands on her hips.

"Come on, I'm listening. But if it's something stupid, I might just slap the shit out of you."

Jonathan grimaced. He couldn't say he wasn't used to hearing women talk like, well, like what Elizabeth had been, a sailor, a pirate. But there was something that made him uncomfortable all the same. About her in particular, not about the comrades who had fought alongside him.

Well. It didn't matter, whatever it was about, whether it had merit or not.

They were using each other. That was all.

"If she didn't kill me from the start, maybe that wasn't her goal. Maybe the Count wanted me alive. And she only lost control when she found herself on the verge of death."

"I wouldn't be surprised if he wanted to get his hands on you. Torture you like so many others, enjoy it a little. But you can't die," Elizabeth said. "Killing you is not killing you."

I'd already thought of that.

"I suppose so," he said, even though it still, for some reason, made more sense to him.

Yes. For some reason.

——

"You know what? I envy you. It may seem like I'm mocking you, but I'm not."

His conversation partner didn't respond.

She produced only a few faint moans. She had lost the ability to scream long ago, for she had screamed until she was hoarse, until she had no strength for anything, nothing more.

Count Dracula turned around, his hands still clasped behind his back.

On his hand was a red-hot iron.

"I know you are suffering grievously," he continued, monotone. Had that woman, tied to the table and exposed like a fish about to be cut up, lost the ability to scream? What did it matter, he'd lost many other things, more important things. "But, if you had lived what I have, you would know that those tears running down your face are...."

He approached the table again.

It had been... How long? How long ago? He had pushed himself away from the table and stood against the wall, lost in thought. How long ago? He shook his head.

He crouched down in front of her, putting his mouth to her ear. As if he was going to whisper a secret to her. And it was. A secret, though it should be obvious.

"A treasure. That's what they are." The Count leaned back. "My heart is dead. I wish I were in your place, after all. I would give everything for…"

How much, how long ago, had he turned away? He shook his head again, hard. His neck ached. His hand ached too, and it burned, it wasn't easy. But the pain was a passing thing. Like a dream.

"I could cut myself open with this iron in my hand and feel nothing. I could, yes. Do you want to see it? I bet you'd like to see me suffer. For revenge. For having suddenly stolen, without knowing why, so many... important things."

Treasures. Treasures.

"All right?"

What was the name of the woman he had brought to this table? It didn't matter. It didn't matter, considering how many had come before her. And how many more would come.

Time was a coffin.

The Count nodded, smiling from ear to ear. A surprisingly honest, childlike smile. Like a child's.

"Okay. Then let's go there."

And he kept his promise.

It meant nothing to him, after all. He turned the iron over in his trembling hands and, without even looking, plunged it into his chest. It had no meaning whatsoever. He had proved ad nauseam that nothing could kill him.

Then he swung it back and forth. Forcefully. Violently.

Like he was trying to open a door that was stuck. Something like that. Only it wouldn't open, that merely something was falling through the gap in the door. Like drops of dew. My blood, my own blood, the whole world reeks of my blood. In two thousand years I have shed oceans of only my own blood even.

The woman on the table couldn't scream anymore.

But she expressed her surprise and horror as best she could, that is, by opening her eyes very, very wide, widening them in such a way that they seemed as if they would pop out of their sockets.

That was all, despite the adrenaline that was surely now flowing through her veins.

Well. She wouldn't have been able to escape, even if she wasn't tied up.

And his assertion had nothing to do with the security here, or even the place itself, which was the biggest obstacle, the most titanic opponent.

No. It was that his prisoner was a bird with its wings clipped, quite simply.

It couldn't fly anymore, it could only crawl on the ground. Thinking about it gave him a feeling of sadness, but distant, hollow, dissociated, like all his feelings.

My heart is dead, he thought, again.

The Count didn't react too much to what he had just done to himself. He didn't scream, he didn't moan. He didn't even fall to his knees.

Nor did he look away from the wounded bird.

He just kept looking at it as his innards scattered around the torture room fell back into place inside him. Everything where it should be, running smoothly. As if nothing had happened. Since he was eternal, he feared no one. Nor for anything.

No fear, no love, no....

But he did have something. There was just one thing that awakened something like joy in him.

Perhaps because human beings were nothing more than animals, after all.

He slid the red-hot iron into the open wound on the woman's right arm. She squirmed, but didn't scream. Not because she was dead. Because, as he had said, she couldn't even scream anymore.

The count's lips, unbidden by him, twisted into a strange smile.

And his eyes. His eyes began to itch.

That was the strangest thing of all, but he didn't care. He didn't have to worry about what other people thought. He was a higher existence, beyond the cycle of life and death.

He just had to worry about holding on tightly to whatever he could. As long as he could.

He had the feeling that he had lost many important things already (a feeling as vague as everything in his life, as if he were a ghost wandering through an equally old mansion), but there was more to lose.

Even the awareness of himself, of his own humanity.

Time was a tomb.

And if he allowed it, it would take away even his right to exist as a human being.