You wake up, much, much later.

You wake up in a large bed, the sheets are smooth against your skin. You are naked.

Coming from the outside, the chant of some crickets mix with the rhythmic vibes of a Salsa band. Some light peers through the windows, it’s nighttime.

Your guts are torn by hunger and thirst yet you feel relieved. It is as if you just woke up from the worst nightmare ever. Not that you mistake what you went through for a dream, it was all real, it is just that this place makes you feel at home, relaxed, without a a care in the world.

You stand on the bed. The room is large and luxurious. The walls are made of adobe and the floor of antique Spanish tiles. An old fan lazily circulates the air in the room. You are in an Hemingway novel, **** is part of life, monsters too. You accept it because life is also joy and passion.

You spot a long white dress on an old arm chair by the window. You stand and get dressed. It is ample and simple yet quite elegant and it fits you perfectly. You step out of the room following the music.

Soon, you find yourself in a large patio. The air is warm, you feel good. The crickets are still singing but the band is louder. Playing in front of a few tables, only one is taken, a single man turns his back on you. You walk to him.

“Ah, you are up,” he says.

You recognize your english officer, only this time he is not wearing the uniform. He is in an elegant white polo and small white shorts. You smile back.

“Where are we?”

“In my hacienda, near Barracoa, you must be starving.”

Without waiting for your answer, he snaps his fingers.

“Have a seat please,” he says as a young latina girl appear. “Please Anita, could you bring Miss Restless, here, something to eat and some water and I’ll have another rum, bring the bottle and an extra glass, please.”

“Si, señor,” the girl says before disappearing.

He looks back at you. He is truly handsome. Despite the fact that you know he was instrumental in the **** of your friend Nicole, you do not mind, not really. Handsome and powerful, you never new that was your type. Apparently it is.

“So Samantha, how are you feeling?”

“I don’t know, confused, I suppose.”

“It is perfectly understandable. Let me try to shine a light on all this. Have you read Bram Stoker’s novel: Dracula?”

“Yes, actually I wrote a piece on it a few months back.”

“Good. I suppose you did not know that it was not a work of fiction?”

“No, I did not.”

The revelation does not come as a surprise although you feel it should. Your mind seems blank of any preconceptions, you take in this new vision of the world with a lot of cool and philosophy. Maybe it is that thing that broke in your mind when Nicole got captured or maybe it is something else.

“First of all, let me introduce myself. My name is Jonathan Harker. I was born on January 7th 1865. When I was twenty eight, my employer in London sent me on a trip to the Carpathian Mountains to sell an estate to a certain Count. You know the rest of the story, you read the letters. Everything in the book is accurate, everything except for the ending. We did not want people to alarm. But the true ending of the story is a bit more gruesome.”

Anita places a plate filled with chicken, beans and rice, a glass and a pitcher of water in front of you. You dive in gladly while Jonathan continues.

“Van Helsing, Quincy Morris, my beloved Mina and myself were all in Dracula’s crypt just before sundown on that fateful night. Two deliberate mistakes were made by Stoker: one it was not Quincey Morris who drove his bowie knife through Dracula’s heart but Van Helsing himself and two, Mina was not on our side. When she saw the cowboy murdering her lover, her vampiric nature took over and she went for Quincy’s throat. Occupied as she was, Van Helsing took advantage and finished the job. But before she could turn back to her human self, she killed the old man. In doing so she became the new Mistress of the night. The whole logic behind the process is a bit complicated therefore I will spare you the technicalities. Was the food to your convenience?”

The plate is empty in front of you. The pitcher as well. You nod, still thirsty to hear the rest of the story.

“After reaping the old man’s head off, Mina turned on me. The next night I woke up filled with a new hunger, a hunger for life. But we had scores to settle, loose ties to take care of. We have been hunting the Van Helsing descendants for the last hundred and twenty years. The Eastern European branch had been the easier to track down and we finished them off in 1942 in a small town near Stalingrad. But Mina knew it was not over and it took us a few more decades to track the rest of them to a farm in Nebraska. One of them had escaped, a girl, very young at the time and she dropped from the face of the earth. It took Mina nearly fifteen years, pulling strings and calling favors, to finally find you and your friends surrounding the girl. We have studied you all and waited. We trapped on the cruise ship not wanting the clever girl to manage another escape. She nearly did but thanks to your indiscretion, she failed miserably. With her ****, the professor’s bloodline is extinct and this opens a whole new range of perspectives for our Mistress Mina... but this is not going to be discussed tonight. Do you want some of this Rum?”

You nod. He takes the bottle brought by Anita and pours you a generous portion. The amber nectar is strong but absolutely delicious.

“When she gave me to you, I decided to keep you, I have always been a collector of trophies and you, my dear, make the most exquisite one. This is why you are here with me. Are things getting clearer? Do you have any questions?”

“Maybe I do... do you know what happened to my sister and my friend Caroline?”

“I am affraid that they did not make it. Our brothers and sisters got to them in the first hours of the cruise and Mistress Mina decided that none of those that had turned then could survive the trip. Does this bother you?”

You stop to think. This should definitely bother you, but it does not. Not a bit. Maybe you are really going mad. That last thought does not bother you either.

“No, not really, I understand. May I ask you what you intend on doing with me, exactly?”

“Yes of course, you see, trophies are preserved testimonies of successful hunts, and therefore I intend to preserve you. Do you like the idea?”

“Does it imply that you’ll kill me and stuff me to keep me hanging from a wall?”

He laughs, you cannot help yourself from laughing too. He wipes a tear from the corner of his eye before continuing:

“As my good friend Quincey would say,” he takes a thick texan accent, “young lady I do intend to kill you and stuff you, and maybe not in that order but I will most certainly not hang you on a wall.”

You both laugh. You go on talking, listening to the music and drinking the rum.

This man’s company is oddly pleasant. He is very interesting and does not lack a strong sense of humour.

After an hour or maybe two, the gentleman extends a hand.

“I think it’s time.”

You take the hand and follow him back into the house. He leads you to a large room much more magnificent than the one you woke up in. On the walls, also made of adobe, several magnificent paintings.

“Is that a Picasso?”

“Most certainly and that is a Miró, a Dali over there and my last acquisition a Barceló. I have a certain fascination for the catalan painters... I really do not know why.”

In the middle a large bed with a mosquito net hanging from the ceiling.

“Surprised? Did you expect a coffin?”

“I kind of did.”

“Ha, coffins, those are so uncomfortable, have you ever tried to sleep with someone in a coffin...” he pauses, “no, probably not. Anyway, I never understood the count. He was most certainly a very solitary man. In my opinion, nothing beats a large bed and heavy drapes on the windows... Now, trophy of mine, would you mind coming into my arms? I think we have some preservation to do...”