VAN HELSING - A Short Story

Part Two, Chapter Nine: The unwanted child

CAMILLE TEPEŠ

I don't know how long I have been aimlessly running around my part of the castle and trying to find something to do to distract me from the news that burdened my heart as of this morning.

Where are those wretched hunters when one needs them for a little adrenaline and distraction? They have been on our trail for so long and today they decided to take a break? Something like this could only happen to me.

And I could not tell anyone about the news. My brothers would disown me and the apparent father of the child would never even dare to take me in. I had no place to go, this was my home. And should I run, the Van Helsings will find and kill me without even lifting a finger.

I was trapped. Perhaps one of the Fairies would know how this impossibility had happened. Vampires are sterile. We don't reproduce and what had happened was against all laws of the Quantum. These were the rules that held together the magical realms.

But before I did anything, I had to inform the person responsible for what was happening to me. The person who defied the laws of nature along with me and the father of this being growing inside of me like a parasite. I never liked children and the more I thought of this, the more I dreaded what will happen eventually. And I felt it grow at rapid speed. Not only had we defied our laws but now, I felt that I defied those wretched humans' laws as well.

I had to tell him. Lucky me that Vlad lived just next-door. I climbed off the chair in my room that I had taken a seat in and tossed my red dress over my unblemished and once thin body. At least my fingers still were and looked as well as they always did with my burgundy nails.

My white-blonde hair was hanging over my shoulders, straight and airy as it always was ever since my turn. I slipped into my heeled shoes and exited my white room. As if that was a determining factor. Everything in my castle was white. Technically not mine but my brothers' yet I felt more up to the task of upholding it than my brothers were currently doing by completely relying on the protection of Vlad and Morbius' Walking Castle.

I exited my room and walked along the equally white corridors, draped with red tapestries and with colourful glass windows set into the marble and quartz walls every now and then. Our home was called the City of Glass for a reason. There was not a wall in this castle that did not hold a window. And there was not a window in these walls that was plain, boring and transparent. Well, transparent yes but colourful and ornate. Every window told a piece of a story and every hallway connected those bits into a tale.

I was so blessed to have so much empty space around here. No way for my brothers to see me and to force me into any unwanted interactions. I quickly found the way to the morning room and crossed the empty space between me and the balcony window. I loved our indestructible glass tables and chairs, I thought to myself while opening the balcony window.

The cold morning air whipped my hair behind my ears and kept it flowing with the wind as the latter entered the cosy and warm room. I stepped onto the balcony terrace and felt the air on my skin. Another perk of being a creature of the night, a Downworlder. It is never too cold for me, being theoretically dead. Yet the warmth is more comfortable anyway so we keep our rooms and hallways heated nonetheless.

I took in a lungful of air through my nose and released the breath through my mouth again. I needed to calm down blast it. The cold inside me helped to numb out the worry. I turned my back to the railing, sat down on it and let myself drop backwards, falling down along the outer wall of my home. I flipped and spread out my arms, feeling the magic condense between those and my body, looking like a black and red, tattered cape. The self-made wings took me up in the air and I kept floating for a while before I took initiative and let my magic direct me towards Dracula's Walking Castle. I let myself soar towards the secret entrance that was our personal little secret. I knew this path like the way to the bathroom by now...