VAN HELSING - A Short Story

Part Three, Chapter Sixteen: The Black Sheep of the Family

IMOGEN 

So much happened in this past... week? Month? I sure did not know how much time had actually passed, that's how overwhelming it all was.

One day, I am working under Lord Johann's care, helping Clarissa with the household and the next, I find her dead on the kitchen floor with Ambra hanging above the body, blood smeared all over her mouth.

Johann must have turned her as they did what they did. Instinctively, I wrote to Black immediately and she showed up merely seconds after. My task to keep an eye on the Lord had thus found its end.

I had left the estate, sealed it with the rune that Lisa had given me and made it so as if it had never existed. And everyone in the city who seems to remember it would forget it too.

After that, I had left for my uncle's. And especially after the urgent letter that I had received from him that seemed like the only right thing to do. We would have to join the Downworld a little later, I had thought back then. These plans were thwarted quickly though. Days later came the purge. Now, they were all gone. Every member: dead.

We had not heard from anyone since that had happened and the longer we were cut off from any information, the more did our hopes fade that perhaps only one single member of the Downworld had survived.

All that uncle did was cooking to pass the time. By the end of the day, we had so much food that he was able to supply those forced to live on the street with three warm meals a day. They were grateful, he was distracted and I was at least halfway content by feeling at least a tiny bit useful.

Vettle was living in a tiny place in a hidden by-street of London that he had found himself after leaving his family. He had transformed it from the run-down shack that it had been into a highly respectable establishment with no free tables, day in, day out.

It had also been a very reliable meeting spot for London's Downworld population by night. That way, he was able to keep an eye on Johann and others as well. But now, there was nobody left to come.

Back then, I had joined him weeks after, leaving my mother to hunt down innocent people by herself – well, apart from Abraham, of course – since I did not want to have anything to do with genocide.

That she would pull it off one day was unthinkable and just as unforgivable as I had rendered it before.

We were kept in the dark about updates from the happened for several days, right until we were surprised by two visitors sometime at night.

We were woken up by the rattle of the doorknob and the loud knocks that followed immediately after that. I was first to awake, rushing down the stairs to my attic room, lighting candle after candle with the one that I kept on during the night.

Vettle hurried out of his own chamber behind the bar counter once I was finished with illuminating the open space. He was the one to open the door and to let in the distressed man and woman in while I prepared them a bowl of rabbit stew – my uncle's specialty – and a proper drink.

He sat them down at the counter, taking their soaked coats and advising them to take a deep breath first before they started eating and before we would inquire the circumstances.

These two individuals were a Vampire named Elliot and a Werewolf lady called Tina. They had no last names and had fled the Stonehenge with Alucard who headed for his castle, halfway in and telling them to find us here in London.

Vettle and I exchanged a vexed look. It was his usual demeanour to abandon responsibility like that but we did not know whether he had any other issues to attend, so we stopped judging quickly.

We asked them further questions about the attack and they assured us that the Black Fairy and Lisa Draculéa were dead without a doubt.
The news struck me hard and my uncle harder for he had known them much longer than me. I did not want to know what Dracula would unleash, once news of his wife's death reaches him. I pity Wallachia for what they will soon have to deal with.

That was where they lived and where they had faced so much hatred by itself that the grave news will push the Red Vampire over the edge and force him to make those prejudiced people suffer.

We let the two of them finish their late dinner before we sent them to our single guest room, apologising for the inconvenience but they shrugged it off, stating that they preferred it that way anyways.

I assumed a couple – which was forbidden by most high families but still practiced in secret by the less prominent faces – and they confirmed that with a timid nod, each.

We assured them that there lay no problem with us and offered them to stay for as long as they needed, the two of them, offering up their assistance in return. We appreciated their offer before every one of us returned to bed and enjoyed an easy night.

Little did we know that the following day will bring more than one surprise with it...