Neko

Time was not on Simon’s side. There in the empty streets of Ghulash, he fiddled with his pocketwatch. It was a common weapon in the Belmont arsenal, much like a dagger or an axe or a crucifix, but drew on far more of their latent magical reserves.

To stop time...

He could feel his wounds seeping, curdling even now. The curse. What he wouldn’t give, to stop time.

If this was any other town, populated with strange characters, he could go rest in the church and treat his wounds, maybe gather some resources. But the wind was as biting as the streets were empty, and all he had were the quiet hours of the evening, ticking away, closer to night and to death with every second.

Impulsively, he clicked the pocketwatch, and everything was at once caught in stillness. His wounds ceased their weeping, blood too still to drip. The wind did not howl.

Tick.

Simon looked around, his long, wild red hair floating in that stillness as though underwater. The town looked no different. It had already been brought to silence.

Tick.

Wouldn’t it be better if the night could never come? If this curse could never touch him?

If he had time, time, time, time, time...

Tick.

It was only a vanishing moment, and Simon’s surroundings snapped back into subtle motion. The pocketwatch was not particularly powerful, and its effects subsided quickly.

He cursed, inwardly. He was wasting energy, wasting time. Wasting everything. Wasting away.

He had to keep going. Night would fall soon.

The waves crashed against the rocky island coast again, and Albus could have sworn that the sound of it would drive him mad. More than the moaning and clanging of the prison bars, haunted by unfortunate spirits forever trapped. More than his own thoughts. Because there was no emotion in the simple routine of the tide and the sea. He would gladly take the howls of despair over something so meaningless. There was meaning in suffering, at least.

He cursed, loudly, slamming his tome on the ground, as the thought of those cold, ocean-blue eyes invaded his mind. What had Barlowe done to her? He knew exactly what. It made him sick, the thought of the Forbidden Room, the girl emptied out, a husk that was once his sister. The wickedest wound he could inflict, the death of her very soul.

He was very angry now, and when he was very angry he worked sometimes at his best and often at his worst. He poured over his notes again; he had become proficient at casting forth the glyph to absorb, but the absorption was the issue, wasn't it? He needed more blood. He had no more control over it than he ever had, even back then on that night in the library...

He collected more blood from the deluded physician he had collected from the village apothecary. To believe he was of Belmont blood! But he knew as he drafted the sigil that this too would not be enough.

He needed all thirteen, and he knew he was short on time. Knowing her, she'd be knocking down the door with crushed skulls and pools of blood in her wake very soon. He felt a sort of grim, familiar affection at the thought of that.

Shanoa...

Yet again, the eyes peered through the reverie, wide and white and horrible, nothing inside but the old man’s will. Sacrifice! Tribute! That was what he wanted!

I should have shot the lies straight out of his mouth, Albus thought, furious, but he knew that he was not strong enough to have ever really done it. Barlowe, his once-dear teacher, still provoked some hesitation, the love of a wretched and starving young boy who had come to admire him.

Maybe it truly would be simpler, to be hollow. Then he would not have wavered, gun shaking in his hand. The Master had blocked his Acerbatus once, but the lightning-glyph he used expended much mana. Couldn't he have gone for the second shot?

He swore again, slamming his fists against one of the towering test-tubes in that secluded prison-lab, glass shattering, rending his knuckles bloody.

Wouldn’t it have been easier to be like her?

It was quiet in the woods again, night enclosing, but within Sonia, first of the Belmonts, brewed the brimming expectation so typical of the dawn. She was waiting, for him, as he never seemed to come in the day. She knew why, of course- why that strange and pale boy with the lilac hair seemed to love the night. But there was gentleness in his touch, his kindness, like he regarded all the world as fragile in his hands. But he never bit, never drank, never ate.

Yes, her dearest Alucard.

Somewhere far away, an owl hooted. Grandfather will be upset that I have disrespected curfew again. Fool. I am no young girl. I can decide such things myself.

A bat was circling above the trees, wingspan larger and more elegant than any earthly nocturnal beast. Sonia whistled as though to a hunting dog, and then in a blink, beside her was her dear companion. Grandfather knew what he was, of course, as everyone knew such legends. He banished him from the house at once, an invitation revoked. It wounded him greatly- and so, they became a whispered secret, youthful love made clandestine in the woods. It was a romance that lived by moonlight.

“Dearest hunter,” Alucard spoke, quietly. “I sense you are not at ease this night.”

“I think he suspects us. I told him I was out hunting, and I do bring back prey from my traps when I can. I don’t know what can convince him.”

“The more time you spend with me, the more you smell of death... I am sure his instincts detect such a thing.” Alucard looked away, eyes sharp and reflective in the dark, words hollow and distant. “The whole village reeks of it. I knew my father was near, but...”

“And I will slay him. Like we promised on that night, when you wandered here a vagrant, searching for him,” Sonia vowed. “As soon as we discover the location of his dread castle. My visions and dreams have me closer than ever... But we must rest for tonight. Let us be lovers.”

“They found another body this morning. The sightings are becoming more common. We must act.” he shook his head, waves of violet cascading down his elegant porcelain neck. “Then let us act as lovers!” she pleaded. “I cannot do this without you.”

“I fear my love shall doom you. You smell of death...” His voice shuddered as he backed away. “Is that not one of your signs, your visions? I have cursed this place like my father has! You saw fear and terror when we met in those woods, the same dreadful eyes!”

“Don’t say these things, my dear prince...” She clasped his gloved hand. “How can you say that you are evil when I see such beauty in you?” With her great strength, she pulled his slender form into her arms. “My Alucard. My poor Alucard...”

“I wish I understood...” he whispered, but he kissed her there, with a gentle chastity. “I wish I understood your kindness. I should too be your enemy: your birthright- your power- tells you as much. Your abilities call you to end things like me.”

“I only slay evil things,” muttered Sonia. “That was the vow I made.”

“Is it not evil that I am here, alive, that I continue to exist, mouth smeared with blood? That lives keep me living... A predator.”

“I’m a hunter. Am I not too a predator? Of animals, monsters, and evil men. We were meant to hunt together.”

He wept in the forest, so caught in terror and love, that sorry great precipice. They knew that as soon as the assault of the Dark Lord’s armies was set upon the little village, there would be no more hesitation. The wake of sorrow and blood would lead them to the castle, and it would be in that moment that they were to be severed forever.

But now. But now.

“One day, I know... You shall be the one to slay me, Sonia Belmont. No one else will do.”

Perhaps that was his own affection.

That day came too quickly, on that redsoaked night of war, when they did battle. Sonia watched as he was sealed away, lowering himself, wounded and bloody with a smile, into a coffin that was perhaps once a childhood bed. Indeed, she had proven herself strong enough to survive, and only Dracula awaited. She wept for Alucard and this suicidal scheme, while he spoke only words of love.

How sad it was, to be his “lovely vampire killer”. Some horrible part of her wondered, as he sank into the little death: wouldn’t it be less painful, if they had never loved at all?

Out of all his mediums, sculpture, sketch and still life, the portrait was his very favorite. Each brushstroke was gestural, emotional, a portrait all its own. The vampire Brauner grew weary of all things but his daughters and his art.

He was in what he liked to call his “crucifixion period”, an ecstatic fascination with that upon which he could not gaze. But perhaps in a way he had always been shunned from such things. It had begun when he had placed a tiny cross in his piece titled “Thirteenth Street”, and the small obsession had grown from here. He couldn’t exactly display these pieces in his quarters (especially not around his dear daughters, perish the thought) and so he carefully stored them in the castle catacombs.

He had chosen a thin brush, for precise little lines, the elegant angles of it all. A stark white figure in the black night, tall and thin. Having outlined it in a delicate pale grey, he took to highlighting the cross in the best white paint he could find, light caught in silver. And to touch the canvas now was as if to touch the sun. He recoiled in pain, but kept painting, carefully, carefully.

The blood poured from his hands in contact with the imitation-cross, and pooled and streaked across the canvas. This was the expert brushstroke, the artistic high that Brauner chased- the ‘blood art technique’, he called it. There was no higher expression of his pain.

That pain, of the day they died...!

“Father?”

It was Loretta, the younger twin. Startled, her father placed a sheet over the unfinished painting. He didn’t wish her to be hurt by such a creation.

“Father, you’re bleeding,” she fretted, taking his clawed hand in hers and lapping at the wound, somewhere between compassion and bloodthirst. The two’s appetites had turned ravenous as they grew accustomed to their vampirism. “It is nothing for you to be worried about,” Brauner replied, lifting from his chair. He dabbed at his bleeding hands with the crumpled paper that lay in monument around his makeshift art-station.

Why should he be in such turmoil? He had trapped Dracula, claimed his castle, resurrected his children. The world could not touch him, here in his great tower.

“Yes, nothing at all...”

But like that cross, the sense of wrongness clouded like a miasma around the castle, penetrating the air. No, this was not his picture-perfect family.

But wouldn’t it be simpler, to further delude himself, and pretend the doubt never came?