In the wheelhouse, the air was thick with a terrifying silence. The Captain stood like a statue, his eyes wide and frozen in a permanent stare of horror. He wanted to scream, to move, to fight, but his body refused to obey. Beside him, Abraham the helmsman steered the ship with the mechanical precision of a clock. His mind had been wiped clean of everything except one word: China.
Sophia stood on the bridge, the cold sea wind whipping her curls around her face. She no longer looked like the charming girl from the docks. She looked like a conqueror,cold, powerful, and dangerous.
Tony had been waiting in a secondary cabin, his unease growing with every mile. He hadn't seen Sophia for hours, and the ship felt wrong. The usual sounds of a busy vessel were gone. There was no shouting, no laughter,only the heavy, forced thrum of the engines.
He stepped onto the deck and shivered. A crewman walked past him carrying a heavy crate. The man's eyes were vacant and hollow. When Tony accidentally bumped into him, the sailor didn't even blink; he just kept moving in a jerky, rhythmic motion.
"Sophia?" Tony called out, his voice lost in the thick fog.
He found her descending the stairs from the bridge. She looked radiant and full of life, as if stealing the souls of an entire crew had given her more energy than a night of deep sleep.
"Tony," she said brightly. "Look at the stars. They've shifted. We've turned."
"Turned?" Tony's heart sank. "Sophia, what did you do to them? I saw the men on deck... they aren't right. And what about Whitmore?"
"Mr. Whitmore is happy," Sophia replied, smoothing the lapel of Tony's coat with a chilling smile. "In his mind, he is the King of New York and I am his doting queen. Isn't that what men like him want? A beautiful lie? As for the crew, they are simply... focused. We have a long journey, and I can't have them distracted by things like 'orders' or 'logic.'"
The Stateroom
They walked back to the luxury stateroom. Alexander Whitmore lay on the bed, naked and trapped in his blissful illusion, a faint smile on his face. Sophia ignored him, pouring herself a glass of his most expensive wine.
"We aren't going to Europe, are we? We could stay in Europe live a good life, we don't need to go to china ,come on look at thing the way I see them " Tony whispered.
"Europe is for people who want to buy things," Sophia said, swirling the dark liquid in her glass. "China is where we find things that cannot be bought. Power that doesn't depend on matches or furniture." She sat down and leaned forward. "Now, tell me about the people who will help us find Dracula."
"Witches," Tony replied, his voice trembling with fear.
Sophia raised an eyebrow. "Witches? I didn't know such things existed. But at this point, I'm ready to believe anything. What did you do to make them hate you so much?"
"I stole something," Tony said. "The Great Book of Tova. It's a book that cannot be destroyed. It cannot even be held by an 'unclean' being. The witches have studied it for hundreds of years. They say it isn't even from our world—that it came from a dimension beyond ours."
Sophia looked thoughtful. "Parallel worlds... science talks about them, but nothing has been proven, "In this era, science recognizes only three dimensions, length, width, and height. A fourth is spoken of, but only as theory, not fact. Other worlds are imagined as distant planets, nothing more.". Why steal it?"
"For the money," Tony admitted. "It's priceless. I thought I could sell it and live like a king for the rest of my life."
Suddenly, one of the mind-controlled crewmen entered the room. "We are closing in on your destination, ma'am," he droned.
Tony stood up,He grabbed the sailor's hand and made a small cut, letting the blood drip into a glass cup. He took a small sip, his eyes wide. "That's impossible. It's been barely a day. This trip should take a month." He looked at Sophia, terrified of how she had warped time and distance.
"We walk the rest of the way," Sophia said firmly. "But first, we go hunting. When I fought Victor at Dracula's mansion, Abaddon had an encounter with a group of hybrids. One escaped. Now, Abaddon wants me to clean up his mess."
"Abaddon? I've never heard of him," Tony said. "Can't you just ignore him?"
"Ignore him?" Sophia laughed, but there was no joy in it. "He isn't the kind of creature you ignore. I doubt even Dracula could beat him, I just need information on how to stop him, Abaddon made me into this... this inhuman monster. Pain, hunger, emotion—everything that makes a human human is gone. And yet, somehow, he can still make me feel pain,I don't know how he does it."
"How did you even meet a monster like that?" Tony asked.
"A long story. An adventure to find the Fruit of Immortality."
Tony let out a dry laugh. "That doesn't exist."
Sophia's expression changed instantly. A wave of ice-cold air seemed to fill the room. Tony felt a chill bone-deep and immediately stopped talking.
The ship groaned as it slowed to a crawl. They had reached the coast near Shanghai. As Sophia and Tony stepped off the ship and onto the shores of China, the hypnosis snapped.
Behind them, the crew blinked, shaking their heads in confusion. In the stateroom, Alexander Whitmore woke up cold and alone, the golden dream vanishing like smoke, leaving him with nothing but a silent ship and a missing guest.
The air inside the cave was thick with the suffocating smell of copper and rot. Deep in the shadows, the hybrid huddled against the cold stone, his breathing coming in ragged, wet gasps.
He looked down at his mangled body with eyes full of hate. It had been four days since the slaughter, and the skin still refused to knit. His advanced regeneration,the very thing that made him superior,had been crippled. To escape the battlefield, he had been forced into a gruesome trade: he had sacrificed his own mangled leg and a severed arm, using his dark biology to sprout a single pair of leathery wing from his spine.
"My wounds ain't healing any time soon," he hissed, his voice a low, gravelly rasp. "Substituting my leg and arm for a wing was worth it to get away, but I'm still broken. I doubt he'll follow me this far. He looked busy... but he was a monster beyond all monsters."
He closed his eyes, the memory of the mission burning in his mind. "I thought I could take him easily. I thought I could bring him back to Father alive,him and that Fruit. The army wasn't a problem. The navy and the seamen weren't a big deal. But that man... Dr. Elias Montgomery the man he wanted me to bring back , he isn't human."
A surge of fury and fear rose in his chest, and he unleashed a roar that tore through the forest. It was a sound of pure agony, a warning to anything living that a predator was dying in the dark.
Only a few days ago, a mother bear had owned this cave. She had six cubs to protect, but they were nothing more than meat to him. He had slaughtered them all, gorging on their warm blood to try and jumpstart his healing. It hadn't been enough. He was still a wreck.
Down in the valley, Tony stopped , The roar had physically shaken the ground beneath his boots. "Did you hear that? Tell me that was just the wind."
"That's what we're here to hunt," Sophia said, her voice flat and cold. "A hybrid from the East. It was sent to capture Montgomery and bring him back alive."
Tony shook his head, his hands trembling. "I saw the stories in the newspapers about Dr. Montgomery and that 'Fruit of Immortality.' I didn't believe any of it. But if you're saying the same thing, then I guess it's true."
"The fruit is a lie, Tony. A trick to lure greedy people in," Sophia said, her eyes scanning the ridgeline.
"And Dr. Elias Montgomery,The man you saw in the papers that's Abaddon. The real doctor is dead. We woke a monster into our world, and now he's working inside Montgomery's skin. He's the one who sent me to finish this hybrid off."
"What is even happening?" Tony whispered, his face pale. "I'm just a regular vampire! I was trying to live a good life, steal some things, be comfortable. I didn't ask for any of this insane nightmare!"
"Well," Sophia said, opening her palm as she let out long claws . "Now you're part of it. We're getting close."
Inside the black mouth of the cave, the hybrid's ears twitched. His senses, though dulled by pain, picked up the sound of heartbeats from miles away. He could hear the crunch of boots. He could hear the confidence in their stride.
"Those ain't humans," the hybrid whispered, his remaining claws digging into the stone until it cracked. "They're hunting me."
He pulled himself deeper into the darkness, his single pair of wing shivering. He had failed to bring the Doctor and the Fruit to his father; now, he just had to survive the shadows coming for his life.