The Count stretched and eased himself into his brocade dressing gown, the once bright crimson now dark red with age. He made his way down the sweeping stone staircase into the great hall of the castle. Ever faithful, Attila awaited him, next to the boxes of earth ready for their journey later that night. He opened the library door for the Count, and when he was seated Attila served him breakfast.

‘That will be all, I am sure you have final preparations to make,’ the Count dismissed his servant.

Dracula grimaced as he drained the last of the pigs’ blood from the desecrated chalice. No wonder he was so debilitated. The sooner they were able to move to a new hunting ground the better.

He leaned back in his chair, and surveyed his library. He let his eyes roam over the finely tooled leather of the books in the 30 languages he spoke, and then gazed awhile at his table of scientific instruments, the latest inventions alongside century’s old astrolabes. He’d said his goodbyes to the rest of his ancestral home the previous evening, but he always left the library, his favourite place, till last. He had travelled much over the centuries but the pain of leaving his native land had never abated.

He glanced down at the post collected by Attila that day. He tore open a parcel from London, and saw with satisfaction that amongst the week old copies of ‘The Times’ was a ‘Strand magazine’, with the latest Sherlock Holmes story to savour. He hoped to meet with Conan Doyle when they were settled in London. His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of arguing and outraged squealing. The women were up.

It had seemed such a good idea at the time to sire the most beautiful women of each generation, to live as his concubines in a state of eternal bliss. Unfortunately the most beautiful women of each generation were also the most vacuous and ill-educated. The library was his only refuge from their constant squabbling and whining about being bored. They couldn’t wait to enjoy the heady delights of a new city. It never failed to amaze him that despite the centuries of clothing they had amassed between them, they always needed another dress or pair of shoes. And of course what one had the others had to have also.

He closed his eyes and tried to focus on the wolf-song outside to take his mind off his hunger pangs. How times had changed. He remembered when he was first turned, the villagers were so in awe of him they would take their fairest women, and most handsome, virile young men and leave them tied to the castle gates as tribute. As time went by it became the crippled, subnormal or aged who were left out in the fields for the servants to fetch. Of course there had always been the occasional trouble-maker in the village. Every 50 years or so some hothead would lead a procession of torch-bearing villagers up the escarpment to the castle to burn it down. They were so full of Dutch courage that by the time they reached the castle half of them had collapsed or wandered off on the way. The others ended up fighting amongst themselves then dispersing. Now some of them were learning to read and write, some had even taken the train as far as Budapest, and were coming back full of socialist ideas and questioning the old ways. Someone had even dared to daub the sign of the cross on the Renaissance gates the count had acquired in Ravenna. They showed no respect for history nowadays. The Castle women didn’t help with their taste for babies and young children. He had told them a thousand times, draining the children riled the villagers up. Besides if all the children went soon there would be no village. They never listened; he wasn’t master in his own castle.

Of course for a rich feeding ground there were always battlefields and revolutions, and always would be. A smile played across his fine Slavic features as he recalled happy times leading his women on forays at the siege of Vienna, during the French Terror and of course following the magnificent chaos of Napoleon’s armies across Europe. But you still needed a base, somewhere to call home.

Yes the move was for the best. A home in a big metropolis was the way forward. It would be easier to hide away, and a big city like London would be teeming with the homeless and dispossessed to feed off. Of course, now that literacy was improving and there was an appetite for these so called Gothic novels, there would no doubt be a following of willing helpers to do his bidding.