Virgin Sacrifice - Van Helsing Fanfiction

13 - The Parasite (And How it Steals)

There had once been a time when Marseille had considered ecology as her subject of study and she had been required to study a tidepool, documenting each painstaking change. She had been forced to travel to the lovely coastal town of Salerno, where she had spent a month hunched-over with her stack of notes trying to billow out from beneath her fingertips. Though others of the academic study had been more taken with the sunshine, decadent foods and friendly locals, the scholar had been immersed in a world of her own.

The rockpool had been a delicate ecosystem, with various moving parts such as the organs, tissues and fluids in the human body. It was an organism in its own right and, though extremely small, was no less wondrous. She had sketched and jotted down notes about the different strands of seaweed which had been tossed amid barnacles, limpets and discarded shells. There had been oozing sea slugs (not one of her favourite animals to document), darting cuttlefish and, on one occasion, a starfish.

But before the study had completed, Marseille discovered something far more sinister. It appeared to be nothing more than a stickleback – a name which had helpfully been given by a local after her description of a thin, streamlined fish with coppery scales and an orange underbelly. She had started sketching it when she'd noticed a strange lump on the side of the fish's face, which pulsated lightly with any ripple in the water.

The creature was shaped like a beetle, with hard, horny plates on each body segment. It was brown, almost the same as the stickleback, but after carefully peeling it away, Marseille found what the creature was doing. A parasite. It was drinking the fish's blood.

"Marseille!"

Anna's hands were shaking the other woman so hard that the touch of each finger would form a bruise. The scholar was wrenched back into the present and her eyes, still slow and dim-sighted, were forced to take in her surroundings. Snow on black stone. Shattered glass shimmering in twilight. A vampire on the parapets.

"We've got to go!" Anna was shouting. "Move!"

"There's no use trying to run, my dear," Vladislaus Dracula's voice boomed, "You are faced with an enemy who can overpower you with a single touch or shatter a bone with a flex of a finger. An enemy whose speeds cannot be matched – or even comprehended," A slow smirk, "by a human."

Marseille breathed, "He's right."

Anna's hand smacked into the scholar's face so hard that her neck was wrenched to the side, nearly knocking her from her feet. Marseille nearly choked - but the warmth that filtered back into her head, pumping to the brain which had felt soggy and disused, made everything appear suddenly clear. The vampire! Marseille grunted in pain. He'd been distorting her thoughts!

"Thank you," Marseille grimaced. 

Yet the other woman was occupied with other things. 

"You can be defeated!" Anna's voice was a roar of vengeance and it struck the windows with a palpable echo, "The secret to your defeat has been passed through my family for generations. I will avenge my ancestors, my Mother, my Father and my brother - "

Vladislaus Dracula tilted back his head, letting the wind catch in his cloak so that it extended much like two bestial wings.

"Your brother is not yet dead, Anna Valerious," He said.

Anna froze, "What?"

It was at that precise moment that a body was dropped in front of them. There was a ghastly clatter as an empty crossbow skidded across the ice  and came to rest in a pile of chipped brick. Marseille dashed forward instantly and dropped to her knees, at the side of the man that she could barely recognise from his cuts and other injuries. Her hands fumbled for a pulse and she found one, faint but discernable.