THE DARKER PASSIONS: DRACULA

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2 THE DARKER PASSIONS: DRACULA By Nancy Kilpatrick Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press 2012 / Nancy Kilpatrick Cover Design By: David Dodd Partial cover image provided by:

3 LICENSE NOTES This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to the vendor of your choice and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

4 Meet the Author Nancy Kilpatrick is a writer and editor. She has published 18 novels, 1 non-fiction book, over 200 short stories, 5 collections of stories, and has edited 12 anthologies. She writes dark fantasy, horror, mysteries and erotic horror, under her own name, her nom de plume Amarantha Knight, and her newest pen name Desiree Knight (Amarantha's younger sister!) Nancy has been a Bram Stoker finalist three times, a finalist for the Aurora Award five times and, in addition to winning several short fiction contests, won the Arthur Ellis Award for best mystery. She lives with her calico cat Fedex in lovely Montreal. As with previous dwellings, this one features Gothic decor, which suits the sensibilities of both residents. When Nancy is not writing, she travels planet earth the Great Curio Cabinet in search of cemeteries, ossuaries, catacombs, mummies and Danse Macabre artwork. Book List Eternal City The Vampire Stories of Nancy Kilpatrick The Power of the Blood World: Child of the Night Near Death Reborn Bloodlover The Darker Passions Series (writing as Amarantha Knight): Dracula Frankenstein Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde The Picture of Dorian Gray The Fall of the House of Usher Carmilla

5 The Pit and the Pendulum

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7 Acknowledgements For all my dear and charming friends. And to Bram Stoker, without whose Victorian prose the glorious underbelly would not shine through nearly as brightly. A.K.

8 "['Dracula' is] a kind of an incestuous necrophillic, oral-anal-sadistic all-in wrestling match [set in] a sort of homicidal lunatic's brothel in a crypt." Psychiatrist Maurice Richardson's assessment of Bram Stoker's classic.

9 Part 1 - Magda

10 Chapter One During the months he came for her, night after night, her window exposed to whipping winds from the mountains, the heavy velvet curtain chained aside so that the moon could guide him to her bed, Magda never resented him. Vlad Tepes was a nobleman of the boyer class, stern, a natural ruler. He demanded much, frightening her and thrilling her at the same time. His harsh discipline taught her to submit; she learned to anticipate his desires and to please him. Each night he pierced her, with his teeth and with his fleshy sword. He drained her youthful blood slowly, erotically, through wounds inflicted in her throat and from the crimson patterns he painted across her bare bottom. When she weakened and could only find her strength in his eyes, she still did not hate him, although the word love, as she had known it, no longer lingered in her mind. Death was like a much-needed sleep her exhausted mind and body embraced. When Magda awoke, his too-handsome face oriented her. Sharp features etched with fierceness and pride burned open her memory. That pale face still held her firmly in its power. They were bound, inexplicably. She understood his commands and obeyed without question. He sensed her every move, as if he tracked her nightly drifts down the mountainside to the village where her gypsy mother had given her birth. Yet this was not so. Since she altered, their physical contact had dissipated. That should have freed her of obsessive feelings, but it did not. Jealousy gnawed away slowly; fungus dining on doomed flesh. More than ever she wanted to possess him, to be possessed by him, to have him all to herself. He assured her the others meant nothing to him. When he brought the first over, Magda was shocked. By the second she realized she had become part of a harem, as if they were all Turks, whose religion encouraged such pagan bonding. The three females lived an uneasy truce. In fact, the other two were natural allies. Both dark haired and eyed, one delicately slim, one fleshy, even in this state. They could have been sisters, and may have been, once. Now these peasant girls clung together like second and third siblings, eternal rivals with the eldest. The onus falls on the first born to mete out strict discipline to guard the rights of privilege, Magda thought. They were two and she one; and although it did not come easily to any of the three, over time she warmed to her role, and the sisters learned to yield.