#hey maybe flash forward in time and have quincey harker show up and get involved helping them!

[vickyvicarious]

By this time I had searched all the tombs in the chapel, so far as I could tell; and as there had been only three of these Un-Dead phantoms around us in the night, I took it that there were no more of active Un-Dead existent.

I think this could be a great hook to a sequel/spinoff of Dracula, which doesn't negate the success of our heroes by contradicting the rules we're told/what we are shown.

So, Dracula is still dead. But Van Helsing missed a fourth vampire. Perhaps a new one, turned by the vampire ladies while Dracula was away, and who thus doesn't have a space in amongst the tombs in the chapel like the rest. Perhaps he missed a tomb along the way.

It could be mostly focused on the locals, who thought they were finally freed of the terror that has been ruling over them for so long. They begin to enjoy themselves once again, to relax their guards a little, to feel happy and safer than ever before, as the Count is gone and the wolves act like normal wild animals, and no one is dying anymore. And when some of the children are too pale/tired and start to tell stories of playing a game with a new friend in the woods, perhaps the adults refuse to hear them, fail to recognize the signs, because they aren't used anymore to victims surviving an attack. And they don't want it to be true, anyway, they desperately don't want to believe that it truly isn't over yet.

Until something happens to convince at least one of them that a vampire truly is still out there. A personal encounter, from which they're only saved by their loyal dog, maybe.

I kind of like the idea of the main character being the adult daughter of the mother who in canon was killed by wolves - perhaps she barely survived and was later turned by the vampire women to become one of their 'sisters'. The daughter will have to hunt her own mother. (This admittedly is still a 'didn't die after all' twist, but far less egregious since her death wasn't shown outright, we just heard her becoming silent and wolves leaving while licking their lips.)

Or, keeping the mother as a red herring by making her into a werewolf, who the daughter thinks is the vampire all along. Only to eventually find out that the vampire is actually her little brother who the mother 'died' for (in this verse probably a bit older, child rather than baby), and now they have to decide whether to kill him or protect him, and in so doing begin again the supernatural oppression that has suffocated their people for so long. Maybe at different points the daughter can be opposed to the mother before they end up coming to an understanding and working together (depending on your version of werewolf). Maybe the howl that saved her from the attack wasn't her dog after all but her mother in wolf form.

It could be a totally unrelated vampire as well, but I think that loses some of the emotional connection that these options have. Still, the decision to approach and even enter into the Castle alone would be huge, for these people who have lived in its shadow their whole lives. And I would hope for an explanation why the vampires let the child turn when normally they just kill their meals permanently, or why the fourth vampire didn't try to eat Jonathan/welcome Mina and menace Van Helsing. But still, if you want to build off the book it's a good starting point.

I think you could get a really heartwrenching and scary story out of this premise. Definitely better stuff than the 'actually, Dracula just pretended to die (and was the good guy all along)' stuff.