Frogs and toads - such harmless, curious creatures he had found friends in as a little boy. Creatures, he later learned, that were firmly believed to be of the devil’s sort. He chuckles dryly.

“A fine trick, should one be preparing a roast for a banquet." A beat. He lets the thought wash over him. "There are worse things into which one could be transformed.”

The idea of having the skin peeled from his back one lash at a time and being slowly and partially lowered into a cauldron of furiously bubbling saltwater had seemed like a kindness in comparison to the punishment Dracula had proposed for Hector’s betrayal. His lips twist into a crooked smile. Better to suffer agonies in one’s own flesh than to be changed and trapped within some twisted, misshapen mockery of a human body, every pain-soaked moment of eternal life spent dragging oneself across the ground to feed on sewage and rotten corpses.

“Transmogrification is not a subject I have read of at length…" He admits. "But I am aware of what the blacker magic flowing through me is capable of in that regard.”

A part of Dracula lived in his and Hector's veins yet, after all.