(Based on characters created by Bram Stoker and Stephen Sondheim)

The smell of cooked bodies lingered through the cold night air of a crowded and dirty city. A tall figure made his way through its dark streets, his nostrils taking in cold air not unused to such derangement, the rotten sewage of a dank metropolis rising to choke any beauty to be found within its crooked interior.

He was dressed in fine clothes, hand-made by the finest tailors in London and possessing an air and sophistication of the wealthiest order, his gait that of a predator, ready to pounce on any victim that caught his eye.

Glaring down gloomy alleyways full of bodily transactions ready to be carried out, he smirked as men festered in their constrained lives, ready to indulge themselves in dingy bedrooms of ill repute.

His ears took in the noise of these and other transactions that held little interest to him other than food, a notion not lost on one particular man who traded in said food, delivering it to the masses in his own sweet and bloody streak of vengeance.

This man's name was Sweeney Todd, a fellow demon who now resided within a glowing bastion of hell, the light from which reflected in hungry eyes, eager to drain the life from the living, their scent lingering around the place like a putrid perfume.

As he entered the establishment, the notion of a shave was not lost on him, and he approached a portly woman, who herself looked like she needed to be drained, perhaps as an appetiser for the main course, yet to come.

"What can I get for ya love?" said Mrs Lovett, eying the tall stranger who stood before her, "a fine shave for a fine gentleman I'll wager? You look just the sort for a spot of the 'ole razor lovin', by my sights I say you is."

Dracula looked on at her with cruel incredulity, yet with the hint of playful malice as he grinned, revealing cruel-looking, protruding teeth and welcoming the prospect of such earthly delights ahead.

"You have me at a loss for words, Mrs Lovett...that is your name, I take it? a fine name for a fine lady," Dracula replied, eying her like a plump piece of meat.

Mrs Lovett blushed, feeling like food for something awful lurking within arms reach a cold fear that gripped her from a place she'd never felt before - a primal place where love goes to die, and fear comes to play.

"Why yes, it is my fine sir..." she said fearfully, "may I be tempted to ask for your name and what you'd like? we have a fine range of pi..."

He cut her off before she could continue.

"Yes, you sell pies, yet all I crave is a shave from the man whose name I have heard spoken off from afar...a Mr Todd I believe, Sweeney...Todd," he said with a hint of menace yet admiration.

His eyes gleamed as her throat tightened, and a chill went over her.

"Yes...that be the gentleman's name alright...nare a closer shave you'll find in all of London, should you wish it, should I take you up now?" she said, trembling as his gaze turned to the upstairs door.

"Yes," Dracula said, "that would be most appropriate, my dear...I look forward to meeting such a fine master of the knife...should he prove able to satisfy my requirements."

She gulped and merely nodded, leading him upstairs, the doorway above a portal to another realm, one which fired the light in Dracula's inhuman soul, a fire fueled by the prospect of meeting his human equivalent.

Mrs Lovett knocked on the door as the slow footsteps of Sweeney approached, slow but deliberate in their pace. As he opened the door, its frame creaked as the light from behind glinted on the razor in his hand, his face a portrait of pure malice as he took in the waiting stranger.

"Mrs Lovett..." said Sweeney, his face a portrait of pure malice as he took in the waiting stranger, "you have a visitor for me I see... a very fine-looking gentleman if ever I did see one...a Mr.?" "Dracula," he said immediately, his tall frame engulfing the room as candles struggled to get their bearings, an unholy wind sweeping across their wicks, as evil mingled with evil, finding a home with whatever curse lay upon this place.

"Count...Dracula..." he said, in a more relaxed tone of voice, "from the greatest country in the world...now in the greatest city in the world, and eager to meet its greatest barber, unequalled in his skill with the blade...a skill I have long since lost, but hope to rekindle someday."

He stood as firm as a statue, his features stone-like in the flickering light, as Sweeney felt fear for the first time in a long time - a fear that refused to bow to any semblance of logic, instead harkening back to a more primal time...when man was food, and the demon lurked in the shadows; eager to satisfy its bloody thirst.

"Yes...I am indeed a barber and would be eager to tend to your every need, my lord…" said Sweeney, a gulp emerging from his throat beforehand.

Dracula grinned and let out a soft laugh.

"No need for civilities, my friend," he said, his face a picture of amusement.

Sweeney raised an eyebrow but said nothing.

"For you and I both are practitioners in the dark arts...only you now reached a level that has impressed even myself," said Dracula, his voice full of admiration.

Sweeney moved to say something, but Dracula cut him off again.

"Yes, I know of your dark trade, my friend..." said Dracula, in a more sinister tone of voice, "I smelled it the moment I passed by here, the unmistakable stench of your own kind, something which I am more than aware of, having feasted on it myself."

Sweeney started to feel real fear now and beckoned for Mrs Lovett to show the man the door.

Dracula merely turned to her like a moving statue, his eyes now red in the light, as she gazed in horror at his now seemingly larger frame, a tall demon, whose cold angular features now resembled a living nightmare.

She obeyed, and shutting the door behind her, he turned back to Sweeney, without seemingly moving at all.

"Now..." said Dracula, "to our business, Mr Todd...or should I say...Mr. Butcher?"

He grinned demonically, and Sweeney, now sweating, nodded and motioned him to be seated.

Dracula, now seemingly "normal" again but no less imposing, hung up his coat on a peg to the side of the door and followed Sweeney to the chair, the haunted site of bloodshed and shattered dreams.

Sweeney, now trembling, began his business and placed the cloth around his neck, seeing his own reflection in his blade's mirrored surface.

He turned to the creature in his chair but could not see it in the blade.

A small laugh rose from Dracula.

"Yes...my reflection is...curious, no?" asked Dracula, highly amused at Sweeney's apparent discomfort.

Sweeney could only gulp and agree.

"I'll say... I'd ask who...what you are, but I'd be frightened by the response I'll wager," said Sweeney, now beginning to wish he'd never opened the door.

Dracula merely smiled and turned to Sweeney, his eyes seductive in the dancing light.

"I am a creature of the night, Mr Todd. A worshiper of its dark ways, its spilt secrets...its haunted nightmares. I am Mr Todd, a creature of opportunity. A vampire and I crave now, more than ever, to feast upon the warmth your kind provide. A warmth spilt by your instrument of death, which you hold close to my own. So, shall we proceed?" Dracula's tone was that of a wise and feral old wolf who enjoyed his nightly pastimes and delighted in the blood spilt from every victim he had the pleasure to feast on.

Sweeney could only look on stunned as his blade trembled, and he set about to the task at hand.

A cold chill set about the place as the candles flickered and Dracula relaxed into the chair, his features icy cold to the touch. Long arms draped themselves over the chair arms, cold as a corpse and just as white, yet far lacking the innocence which fell in winter on the streets below.

His fingers were long and pointed, and as Sweeney swept his blade across the angular features of the vampire, he could not help but shudder as the long nails flickered and twitched in the candlelight, their points looking like knives, waiting in the darkness to be unleashed on their prey.

Dracula looked dead in the chair, his breathing barely registering to Mr Todd's senses, his eyes cold and lifeless, hardly moving an inch, reflecting tiny pinpricks of light that seemed to be swallowed in an endless abyss of darkness, sinking into the depths of death itself.

Sweeney was nervous, and, in a sudden slight motion, he nicked his skin slightly. A small growl emanated from deep beneath his rib cage, sounding like the murmurings of a wild beast, ready to rip at the hands that held it.

"Beware, my friend," said Dracula, "for you do not know the full depths of my power...it is unwise to make such foolish mistakes...for the blood in your veins is a sweet elixir...and my animal is hungry...hungry to be fed, and drain whatever life you have to give to me...do not tempt me, Mr Todd."

His words seemed almost not to be spoken as if the lips barely moved, yet the sound itself has all the potency of a venomous snake, a storm ready to rise if lightning struck in the right place. A rage that Sweeney dare not tempt. Yet one that reminded him of his own.

"Yes...you do have rage, do you not Mr Todd...a firebrand that emanates from your very soul. You have lost, and now desire revenge on the man who betrayed you...took your...wife, I believe." He said, in a sympathetic yet thinly-veiled mocking tone.

Sweeney gulped and fought to suppress the anger that now swelled up inside him, his knife quivering at the demon who sat before him, and though he knew better, he was tempted to let it have its say in the manner.

"You could say that, my fine sir," Sweeney said, now feeling his heart begin to sink as memories came flooding back to him.

He resumed gracing his instrument across the cold desert of death that lay before him.

"And how did she die, my friend? was it...painful?" Dracula asked, not caring if he was pushing too far at this point.

Sweeney fought back his emotion as he knew he was being played with by a monster and tried to keep his composure as he carried on the work.

"She died at the hands of another monster...a human one who is scum and will die by my blade soon enough...when the time is right," said Sweeney, now simmering with thinly disguised rage. One which Dracula could feel, almost taste. It was delicious. He let out a small guttural laugh that sent chills through Sweeney.

"Ah yes...human vengeance..." said Dracula, deeply amused, "a ridiculous notion...that you creatures think you can hurt each other over the slightest of things. You are like rats, fleeing from a sinking ship, all waiting to bite each other at the next opportune moment...how... pitiful," he said, in a shadowed voice swollen with potency and menace.

Sweeney's eyes were swelling in the candlelight, his hand trembling and the razor now letting a small stream of blood spill down from the fresh-cut in Dracula's neck.

Dracula's eyes immediately came to life, and malice spread across his face like a storm on a hot summer's day.

He knocked Sweeney's hand away before it could do any further damage. Grabbing him by the throat, he lifted him in the air, the candlelight flickering across his face, which now resembled a wild animal, teeth bared in a fury.

"And now, Mr Todd, you have made your final mistake...blood is too precious a thing to waste, and you have wasted your only chance," Dracula said, intending to destroy his now worthless blood meal.

Sweeney merely looked on in horror as Dracula pulled him in as a man might pull in a piece of food to his mouth. However, he stopped, just short of Sweeney's face, his mouth emanating no breath and Sweeney's filling the cold room with steam.

"Yet I will not kill you," Dracula said, now contemplating a different approach, "as much as it is tempting...for I wish to see this game played out, and watch as humans destroy each other for the sake of emotion...go to your task Mr Todd...go to it."

He pulled Sweeney yet closer before throwing him on the floor in a heap, Sweeney rubbing his throat and gasping for air.

"Go to hell" is all he could mutter as Dracula merely grinned and walked towards the door, Mrs Lovett bounding up the stairs to the door.

"Good day, my friend...may you find peace at the end of your journey", Dracula said before moving to depart the now icy and frigid room.

He opened the door just as Mrs Lovett ran into him, knocked back almost as if by a wall of ice.

"What the bleedin' hell is going on in 'ere...you! Where is Mr Todd?" said Mrs Lovett, a far cry from her earlier, mouse-like self.

He regarded her with amusement before pointing to Todd, now lying in a heap near the chair, looking forlorn and pitiful.

"He took a turn for the worse, I'm afraid, had a fit and is now regaining his composure. He will be well once he has had some wine; red wine, perhaps. I hear it is good for the spirit," Dracula said, amused by her change in attitude.

He turned away and brushed Mrs Lovett aside like a rag doll, moving down the stairs and leaving her to attend to Mr Todd, who by now felt like he was waking from a horrible nightmare.

Dracula meanwhile brushed through the sea of bodies now consuming each other in the room below, eyeing them like a wolf eyes sheep.

His roving eye caught one magnificent specimen, a young woman all of twenty, with long flowing red hair and a tongue to match, judging by her candour with others.

He closed in for the kill and satiated his thirst that night; the woman lost in a sea of others that lived and died under the watchful gaze of a blood-red moon; the sky painted red the following morning.

Authors disclaimer/note: I do not own the characters of Dracula, Sweeney Todd and Mrs Lovett, and based them on memories I had from the "Dracula" novel and an adaptation of Mr Sondheim's musical I saw in 2014, along with recollections from Tim Burton's 2007 film adaptation. Because my inspiration for the characters of Mr Todd and Mrs Lovett came from those sources, I decided to attribute them to Mr Sondheim for the sake of simplicity, and I am aware of the many different authors who have had a hand in creating the famous barber over the years. I am also aware that the timelines of the two characters mean they would not have been in London at the same time, but I had fun with the idea nonetheless and hope you have too. I look forward to writing more fan fiction in the future, hopefully! All comments and reviews welcome :)

This story originally was published on my fanfiction.net account here, but I figured having a copy here is a good thing if only so I have my own version of it to publish. Hope you enjoy :)

Update: the story has been revised to correct some minor errors.

Update: the story has been revised to correct errors and make additional changes.