Last Daughter of the House of Belmont (Book II)

3

The explosion was so large and bright that the entire party was flung in all directions and were all momentarily blinded. Walls had crumbled and collapsed, the ceilings barely clinging together as dust and rubble covered the floor. The sound was deafening, a ringing in their ears as they all struggled to get up, assess the damage, and find each other in the wreckage.

"Belmont!" Sypha called out, hearing the faint groans of Trevor buried under several tons of plaster and stone. She was injured, with a large gash dripping down her temple, and her right arm limp at her side, the bone protruding out at an unnatural angle. The flickering, bright glow of her magic filled the darkened space, and the rocks reluctantly shifted aside as she struggled to free him from the pile.

A short distance away, Alucard slowly regained consciousness, a large stretch of ceiling beam buried into his side. He spluttered and coughed, feeling the wood rub against his insides, and the rush of dust filling his mouth with a dry, acrid taste. Alucard slowly crawled to his feet, gritting his teeth in pain as he pulled the beam out of his side. The wound wouldn't be enough to kill him outright, but he was bowed at the waist in agony. He clutched at the wound to stop his entrails from spilling out as the flesh slowly knitted itself back together.

In the space where his father had been just moments before, was now a wide crater filled with black smoke and ash. All that remained of him was a charred outline of his body. The great Vlad Tepes, monster, villain... his father... was no more.

Before he could allow that grief to settle in and take over, he felt something hard and unyielding against his boot. As the swirling dust gradually settled around him, the shining steel of Seethe was revealed - untouched and as cold as fresh snow. It was then that he felt his heart stop in his chest. Elizabeth. He'd heard her soft goodbye. He'd watched her face disappear into the light.

Alucard hit the ground hard, his knees buckling under him as the floor around him shattered, cracks spiderwebbing outwards from where he knelt. "Elizabeth..." he cried softly and slowly at first, then his voice gradually rose to a howling shriek as he cried her name over and over again.

Once Trevor was finally free, he sprinted blindly over to Alucard, shaking his head and trembling the whole way. "She can't be..." Sypha tried to comfort him, swallowing her tears, but it didn't help. Trevor began to claw through the dirt and rubble for her, crying out for his twin, screaming in refusal that she couldn't be gone. She was still alive, she had to be. Elizabeth wasn't dead. One of us needs to live, he'd said. And it shouldn't have been him.

"Belmont..."

"No!" he roared as Sypha tried to pry his bleeding fingers out of the dirt. "We can't just leave her here. We have to get her out... she can't breathe under all this... she hates small spaces... they make her cry." The crack in his voice made him look so small, so innocent, and suddenly he was a child again, listening to his family being slaughtered all over again.

"Trevor, she's gone."

"No, she can't be! She- she's just-"

"Belmont, please."

Trevor dug until his fingernails were bloodied and his palms blistered. No matter how much pain he was in, he kept digging. In the end, Sypha had to resort to knocking him out with a spell to stop him from clawing through his skin to the bone. He stirred through the forced sleep, still silently crying and clawing out for his sister. She took his filthy cloak and folded it under his head for a makeshift pillow before she moved on to Alucard, who had gone completely still and was unnervingly silent. His eyes were wide open, but he wasn't moving.

"Alucard, I'm begging you... I need your help to get him out of here. We can't stay here." Her voice was shaking, and as she spoke more of the walls around them were collapsing in on themselves. Fresh plumes of dust and debris filled the space, and the air was harsh against their throats.

"She was right there."

"I know, and I'm sorry, but there's nothing we can do for her now."

"I wasn't fast enough..."

"Alucard, we need to leave."

"How can you be so callous and indifferent?!" he shouted, turning on her with a wounded but vicious look. "She was your friend, she's Trevor's sister... she's - she - she's dead." Saying the word aloud felt like a knife through the heart, tearing his already bleeding body open wider. He hadn't felt pain like it since his mother's death. It was all-consuming and left him empty inside - all except for his anger. Anger at himself, at Sypha... and deep down, at Elizabeth.

On the other hand, Sypha was not angry. Her fists were not clenched in rage, nor her face twisted into one of hatred. The tears she'd been holding back finally broke like a dam, and her eyes turned painfully red. She was devastated. Grief was new to her. She'd never lost anyone before and hadn't felt the crushing weight of loss that now threatened to cave her chest in. Elizabeth was her friend, her first real friend. She gave her extra blankets when she grew cold, and comforted her when she missed her family. She made sure Sypha remembered to eat, and she stayed with her when she felt scared. And now, she was gone. Nobody to bury, no grave to honour, just gone.

"I'm not indifferent. I'm not fucking callous. Do you think I don't want to dig for her? Do you think I haven't done the calculations in my head? If she'd given me the flask, I could have done something, I could have shielded her, or I could have come up with a better fucking plan! But she'd dead. She is gone. Elizabeth is gone. And I couldn't do anything, I was fucking useless. All I could do was stand there and watch her die. And it's tearing me apart, knowing that I could have done something, anything, to save her."

The tiny woman punched her good arm into a crumbling block of the wall, the sound reverberating with such force that Alucard flinched. The reddened haze that fell over him quickly dissipated, replaced with guilt. "Sypha," he tried to break through her curses, swearing as she grew more distraught.

"Trevor lost his sister, the only family he had. I kept talking about my family, about my sisters, my brothers, and he had no one now. She was all he had left."

In the background, there was a faint noise, like somebody knocking gently on a door. Thunk. Thunk. Thunk. It began loud, steady, then growing fainter with each thunk. Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.

"He is all alone because we couldn't save her. Because we didn't do anything - we just stood there and watched helplessly as she died! We didn't even try to stop her!"

"Sypha."

The noise wouldn't stop, and it had a beat - repeating in a series of threes, over and over again. It was coming from the room below, bouncing up through the hole between the floors. Thunk. Thunk. Thunk. It took a while to catch Alucard's attention, with Trevor's faint cries and Sypha's rant drowning everything else out. Thunk. Thunk. Thunk. He strained hard to listen, to the point where he pressed an ear to the remaining floorboards. Thunk. Thunk. Thunk. There was something else, something fainter under everything - a heartbeat rapidly fading and a hopeless voice whispering, "Please, help me."

"What the hell are you doing?" Sypha gasped.

The vampire was tearing away at the floor, throwing dirt, rubble and enormous planks of wood in all directions with frantic and desperate movements. He couldn't see or hear the speaker over the clattering and clamouring. Instead, he focused solely on the weak heartbeat below them. It was slowing down. He begged and prayed it would hold on a little longer. Every plank he ripped out made the entire castle seem to move and shake.

"Alucard!" She cried out in terror, her feet stumbling over Trevor's unconscious body as she retreated. A wall of wood and stone soon separated them. "What are you doing?"