Most of them stay dead...

Part 1

"Not all the people he feeds off come back. Most of them stay dead." Extract from conversation between Jonathon Harker (Revenant/Pre-Vampire) and Sister Agatha Van Helsing (Nun) as recorded by Mina Murray, from the archive of The Harker Foundation.

Sitting in the darkened room of her office flicking through her own precious notebooks Zoe Van Helsing pondered what that would mean for them, for England, for the world. Dracula would be released in only a few hours and there was nothing legally any of them could do to stop it. He would be free to reign terror, to vanish into the shadows that had hidden him for so long, and they would be powerless to stop him. How many more of the undead would rise because they had failed...no she had failed, her ideas had caused this, her grand plans to search the seas and locate Dracula not merely wait for him to reappear.

It was humiliating that all of this had fallen apart on her watch, and Zoe didn't know how she was ever going to face the inevitable disappointment of her...remaining family.

She had been so proud the day her father stepped down from the board of The Harker Foundation, and she had been installed in his place as a worthy successor. As a full board member Zoe had finally been gifted access to the foundations most precious resources: Mina's original hand-written account of the conversation between Jonathon Harker and her own ancestor Sister Agatha Van Helsing; the only written records from the voyage of the Demeter told from the perspective of each of the survivors, and access to the secure vault, and the preserved remains of Dracula's known victims.

Zoe had been so certain that with more advanced technology, and the required additional funding, the foundation could move past the wait and watch mandate that had been their primary mandate, to more proactive means. So what if the funding was from a questionable source? So what if her more senior scientists occasionally had to assist on research that had less benevolent purposes? They did more than enough good to balance it out, medical research, and let's not forget protecting the world from an undead monster. Only now she had failed at that, the one thing that allowed Zoe to sleep at night; especially on those nights, after she heard whispers of how some of the drugs, they had helped to "test", were really being used.

It was a hard legacy to live up to...the Van Helsing name.

As a young child she had been raised on the heroics of Agatha and Mina, had idolised those women who seemed somehow something far greater than any fairy tale princess or movie star. They had been real heroes and Zoe had wanted to join that pantheon, but she had been running out of time; her cancer was terminal, and so what if they had to take a few risks? Zoe had been so sure...and now her hubris had released the very devil, Agatha had given her own life to cage.

There just had to be something...something she could do to stop this, they had everything in place to manage this threat here but only if they could somehow convince Count Dracula to willingly sign himself into their "care". Yet how could one barter with the devil when you had nothing to offer...nothing he wanted? Dracula was capricious, ego-centric and adaptable, and apart from century old accounts they knew very little about him. What motivated him, what other than thirst and blood lust drove him?

Head on her desk Zoe resisted bashing her forehead against it; a headache wouldn't help her think straight. In a fit of pique Zoe swiped her notebook off the desk, pens and phone too, their clatter distinctly unsatisfying, but her office was bare of anything that would make a decent crashing noise.

"Knock knock."

"I'm not the best company right now Jack." Zoe answered without even lifting her head.

"I thought you might need a coffee about now?" Zoe's former protégé answered as he entered the office. "However, if you are just going to throw it I will drink it myself."