[snarling softly]
The trick worked.
[Varney] The stupid little trinkets
you found on that human body?
I think they steal things from their own court,
carrying them as talismans or some primitive shit.
The underground court we’ve never been able to find.
I always wondered if they were confusing our senses
with holy water.
And then some idiot shows up
with a divining set around his neck,
probably thinking it would make him resistant to swords.
There. That’s their underground court.
She took the tracking stone right there.
[laughs]
My plan was magnificent.
It wasn’t your plan.
It was my plan.
You just agreed to it.
Well, I gave my assent, therefore it became my plan.
Be happy I even remember you’re here.
What did you just say to me?
You heard me.
Dracula sent me here.
I was to make Targoviste a gift to him.
Now I will return him to earth and present it to him.
You’re just my little helper.
Fuck you to hell, Varney.
I am entirely fucking finished
with propping up your delusional bullshit
just to get things done.
What?
I am a soldier.
I still do not know what the fuck you are supposed to be.
I’m Varney of London, you insolent Slavic pissflap.
You’re a joke!
You’re a shallow criminal
who somehow wormed your way into Dracula’s circle
a hundred years ago.
And then he sent you all the way out here,
to the city he’d already burned.
How useful did he really think you are?
[laughs] That’s...
That’s not what happened.
Shut up.
Oh, Ratko, my boy, you’re a criminal too.
-I know you. -You don’t fucking know me.
I know you.
I smell the death on you.
You’ve committed crimes.
I’ve practiced war.
War is armies meeting each other on the field of combat.
-That’s not what you do. -Right.
I’m a clever soldier.
I’m a committed soldier.
I don’t go to pageants.
I don’t play games.
[laughs] Are you justifying yourself?
Eat shit. I fight wars.
You have no idea, do you?
War is when you kill so many of the other side
that they can’t fight you anymore.
Prancing around on a meadow isn’t war.
Stealing into a tent
and cutting every throat in sight is war.
Poisoning wells is war.
Killing every baby in a town and disappearing, that’s war.
War is for winning.
And tracking that lunatic down into her secret rooms
and surprising them to death,
that’s what I do.
That’s what I did.
And you, standing there flapping and posing.
You’re everything I hate.
You vampires who think it’s all about wit.
I use the word loosely,
because you are a shithead for the ages.
Being charming, using clever words,
desperate for people to admire you
because you’re special.
Too much of the damaged, needy human on you.
You’re not a vampire.
I’m a fucking vampire.
I lie and I cheat,
because lying to pigs is meaningless,
and I’m hungry.
I take everything anybody has,
every last fucking drop,
and then I hunt for more.
I am not a criminal.
I am fucking perfect.
Oh, dear, young man.
-Perfect? -Perfect.
I was given to the Earth
to feed off everything on it as I choose.
Well, let me tell you, Ratko,
you do not know what I am.
But I tolerate you precisely because you’re good at death.
It nourishes me.
Whatever.
You made me angry.
I don’t like to be angry.
Whyever not? Anger makes you kill, surely.
I bet you even kill in your dreams.
In my dreams, I am calm.
I am nothing but motion, and fear, and hunger,
and all the people in the world
are lined up like animals in pens
for me to bite the blood from.
People forget what we are.
Where do you think you’re going?
Well, you seem to have taken over the effort aboveground.
And I have other things to attend to.
Yeah. One thing in particular.
Look, we’re done screwing around.
You are going to show us your fabled underground court.
And then we are going to get this place in proper order,
defend the people and clean out the city.
Are we clear?
I think it’s time for you to go to the Underground Court.
Yeah, isn’t that what I just said?
Oh, I don’t know.
I stopped listening a second or two
after you started mewling about what you want.
Then I decided it was time for you to follow me.
Know your place.
[shudders]
Let’s take a look at this place first, hm?
Hm. Mm-hm.
Masterly, masterly.
What an awful bloody daub.
Nobody’s going to miss that.
I have the location,
and I am preparing the way.
It is the time for accuracy, excellence,
and whatever passes for courage in you people.
[wind gusting]
[children laughing]
Hm.
[all giggling]
[chuckles]
Boo.
[all laugh]
[Greta] That was nice of you.
I didn’t realize anyone was watching.
I was looking for you.
Imagine my surprise when you dropped out of the sky
and frightened a year’s growth out of the little bastards.
Sorry.
No, really.
It was nice of you.
They don’t all have an adult
who’ll pay any attention at all to them.
[Alucard] Let alone plummet down on them
like death from above, I suppose.
You gave them a story they’ll be telling forever.
I heard them laughing.
[wind gusts]
[children laughing]
Hm.
It’s been a while since children laughed here.
You were looking for me?
I wanted to talk to you about defenses.
And I wanted to ask about your food supplies.
I’m not sure there’s much.
Well, that’s the thing.
I was hoping we could use some of the dried meat you have
to make meals go a little further?
Use it all.
Seriously?
Whatever you can find.
I tended to forage fresh food in the mornings,
but I’m sure I have some preserved things
in the pantries.
You don’t actually know what you’ve got in your castle, do you?
Not really.
It looks like you were feeding an army in there
up until a couple of months ago.
Well...
that wasn’t me.
But I take your point.
I’ve been preoccupied.
Beyond clearing up some of the damage from...
Let’s talk about something else.
Defenses.
I mean, I hope just closing your castle doors
will keep people away, but...
We’re going to start losing the light soon.
Let me show you where the weapons are kept...
and then we’ll look at the outside.
[footsteps crashing]
We remember Radu the Black.
[woman coughing]
[man coughing]
[baby crying]
Oh, my God.
Wait here.
[inaudible]
[groans]
Bloody hell.
I know.
This is horrible.
Yeah, but that’s not what I meant.
Huh?
Can’t be.
You found a new toy?
I don’t know.
Not a toy.
What on earth is it?
Well, the story goes that a mad Norwegian vampire hunter
went to India,
and he convinced the weapons master of the Raja-Putra clans
to make him this thing.
There’s only one.
I saw drawings of it in my mother’s books.
The real question is how it ended up here.
[blade rings]
See? Sign of the cross.
Mm-hm.
Did the vampire hunter die in India?
Because Hindu vampires wouldn’t have the faintest idea
why he was waving a cross at them.
Actually, no.
Vampires are basically an evolved predator species,
so their eyesight is pretty different to ours.
Turns out that if you put a big geometric shape
right up close in their field of vision,
it confuses the shit out of their brains
and, you know, makes them panic.
Huh. How do you even know that?
Yeah, I learned all kinds of things
when I was going to be a heroic monster hunter, remember?
And then all the shit happened,
and bit by bit I suppose I lost it all.
And now I’m starting to pick it all up again.
The question is,
if you’re keeping stuff like this down here,
then why aren’t you using it up there?
Because your betters wish it so.
[Trevor] Then it’s time I meet them.
Are they through there?
Oh, I didn’t say you could meet them.
They’re resting.
Yeah, well, time to stop sleeping through all this.
Look into my eyes.
Do you really, really want to make my life
any more annoying right now, hm?
[mouthing inaudibly]
Wakey wakey, you shower of assholes.
You cannot speak to them like that.
Well, I see why
they’re so remarkably unconcerned about everything.
[Zamfir] Keep your voice down.
[Trevor] Why? They’re not going to wake up.
The others here don’t understand about the royal sleep.
Oh.
Yeah.
Zamfir, these two need to be laid to rest.
This is just wrong.
Do you have a priest?
No priests.
Zamfir, listen to me.
This is over.
It will never be over.
The apocalypse will never claim us.
The catastrophe of Targoviste will never happen again.
We killed all the priests, you see.
[sighs] Really.
We are taking back control of our country.
Targoviste isn’t a country.
[laughs]
It’s the beating heart of the country.
Not even a city.
It’s the greatest city in the world.
We are its stewards.
-We’re taking back control. -Control? Yes.
Letting your people starve
and swim around in their own shit.
Not helping them organize.
Not helping them defend themselves.
I haven’t been wiping their asses either.
Should I nip back up there with some rags?
You could try giving them the aid
to live their damn lives.
[Zamfir] Look!
We’ve taken so many people in down here.
[Sypha] Yes, you’ve made an interesting collection
of people who are clearly dying of neglect.
[Zamfir] We neglect no one in the Underground Court.
These people have cracked lips,
and you have flowing water back there.
[Zamfir] We need that. For defense.
Holy water.
Where did you get it if you killed all the priests?
We recovered it from intact religious buildings.
Do you know some of them used to cask and bottle
holy water to sell?
You could have used it to give people something to drink.
The court must be defended.
What if we’d let people drink it all,
and then vampires crossed empty channels
to enter the court and kill everybody?
Sure. You couldn’t risk letting vampires in.
They might have tidied up.
Oh, that doesn’t even work.
And you’re defending two dead bodies.
They will wake.
Their majesties will awaken from their royal sleep
and save us all.
You’re insane.
Of course I’m insane.
The fuck what now?
I went insane the day Dracula hit the city.
I saw his face in the sky.
It was like the devil himself punched the world.
How could you not lose your mind,
seeing hell touch your home?
I sleep for two hours a night and wake up screaming
ever since it happened.
So you’re not so crazy that you don’t know you’re crazy?
They will wake.
They are magicians.
They are royal blood.
They journey in the subtle realms
to recover their strength,
and I have to defend them until then.
I get it now.
You have been suffering for so long.
Were you the last person of noble birth left alive
when Dracula struck?
[scoffs] I am not suffering.
This is the great work.
This is my glorious duty.
I will save everyone by saving them.
Huh.
Well, no wonder they broke it into pieces.
Did you drag them out of the ruins of their palace?
It was my job. I saved them.
They will wake.
They will save us all.
And everything will be set right.
Everything will be as it was.
They are magicians, Sypha.
Are they?
The priest class always suspected it.
They harried the royal family. Can you believe it? But look.
Look at all the things we recovered from their palace.
Behold their mystical treasures.
I saved them. So they will save me.
Are you done farting around over there?
I don’t know who taught you all these words, but yeah.
Okay. Good.
I am truly sorry for everything that has happened to you.
But all this has to stop now.
W-What?
[Sypha] We need to get these people help.
We need to arm the healthy ones
with the weapons you have down here.
We need to abandon this space, organize and--
Abandon?
Abandon the royal family?
This is a mess.
You did the best you could, but your rulers are dead
and the people need you.
No. I saved them.
-[loud crashing] -[woman screaming]
[woman shrieks]
[night creatures snarling]
[crickets chirping]
[distant explosions]
[creatures growling]