Last Daughter of the House of Belmont (Book II)

5.

It was well into sunrise when Alucard emerged from the lower depths of the castle, looking for his friends in the rubble and wreckage. Trevor and Sypha were supposed to help him bury the bodies - well, what was left of them in the ashes and scorched bones - however, the castle was suspiciously quiet.

"Trust a Belmont to get a job done," he muttered under his breath as he passed one of the doorways leading into the foyer. Suddenly, he stopped dead in his tracks, his breath stolen away as he was struck with awe at the radiant sight before him.

The sun slowly filtered through the main entrance of the castle. Its warm rays illuminated the dusty air and cast a faint glow on the blood stains and water-logged floors. As the light gracefully trailed up and danced through the debris, it seemed to carve a path through the darkness until it finally reached Elizabeth's hunched form. It enveloped her in a warm embrace, swaddling her in a golden, heavenly light that seemed to radiate from within her very being.

Alucard dared a step closer, choosing where to place his feet with great care so as not to break the spell. There was no way for her to spot him in the shadows, his body cloaked by the pitch, but no doubt the creak in the floorboards would betray him.

He studied her, eyes marking the serene expression on her face as she tilted her head upwards towards the warm rays of sunlight. Her eyes closed in a state of pure contentment, without a single crease or frown to mar her peaceful countenance. If he only focused on her face, he could almost ignore the large swatches of ragged white cloth holding her together, more bandage than Elizabeth at this point. One was wrapped tight around her belly, holding Sypha's needlework in place - and stopping Elizabeth from getting her grubby fingernails into it - with another pinning her arm to her chest. Her clothes were in a worse state, the Belmont heraldry had been completely burned away, and her shirt was more ashen than its usual yellowed tinge.

But that wasn't why he stared at her.

No, Alucard stared because he needed to see that she was alive - his eyes tracing the steady rhythm of her chest rising and falling, his ears picking up the sound of her wheezing breaths, and his nose catching the scent of her warm skin. Those seconds after the blast were harrowing, more wounding than grief for his father, more paralysing than the catharsis of protecting his mother's memory. He thought she was gone. He watched the exact moment Elizabeth made the choice; made her peace with dying. And he had done nothing.

"I can hear the gears turning in your mind from here," her voice, raspy and strained from coughing up lungfuls of dust, whispered between laboured breaths.

"Are you sure you aren't undead?" His question elicited a hoarse and broken laugh from her, a sound she had not made in ages. Despite the pain and struggle it caused, she couldn't help but smile. Her cracked lips strained as she bared her teeth to the sky above.

"Prick."

"Witch," he grinned, taking a confident step forward into the light - her light.

This was the first moment Alucard and Elizabeth had been alone together since the fight. Trevor had been glued to his twin's side, hovering like a nervous hen, from the second she was pulled from the rubble, much to Sypha's annoyance. Not even the speaker's magic kept him from his sister's side, too afraid that if he took his eyes off of her, she might disappear. Alucard understood the feeling.

With careful and deliberate movements, he cautiously avoided any contact with the numerous cuts and bruises on her body, gently pulling her into his embrace and allowing her to relax and sink into the safety of his chest. She was alive, he reminded himself. She was right there. Now it was his turn to close his eyes, letting the light wash over them, an aura of orange and white circling them.

But even as they took their moment to breathe, unease lingered beneath it all; what happens now?

None of them had an answer, least of all Elizabeth. She had achieved what no other Belmont before her could. She had put to rest the souls of her forebears and vanquished the evil of all evils. But what else was there? Keep on travelling and killing? The last fight had left her worse off than she'd ever been.

Sypha had had to cauterise the wounds on her, branding her with fire - a pain she never wanted to feel again - and the woman wasn't even sure if there was any shoulder left to push back in. She still couldn't move the fingers on that arm, feeling nothing but a faint tingling under her fingernails, like ants crawling under the skin. It was the worst she'd been physically... and her emotional state, well.

She'd been ready to die, ready to let go, ready to leave the world behind so that she could save her brother, her friend; and Alucard. A heroic end, by anyone's measure, but she hadn't died. Elizabeth didn't know how to feel about it, she still wasn't sure how she was alive. The last thing she'd felt was the scorching heat of the Attiwen, and then... cold, a coldness like nothing she'd ever felt. It seeped into her bones, burying so far down into her that she felt shards of ice in her soul. It was like she was thrown into the darkest pits of the sea, yanked down into the abyss until all light was a distant memory. Elizabeth shuddered, the chill's tendrils reaching through her memories for her.

"Now whose gears are churning, where did you go just then?"

She didn't have the words to explain it, or the will to share it with Alucard. She was sure whatever it was, it wasn't done with her yet. And that terrified her.

With a slight shake of her head and a deep inhale, she lifted her gaze to meet his, leaning her chin against his chest for support. "Nothing, just shuddering at how much it'll cost to replace my boots." As she spoke, she wiggled her toes out of the split leather.

He eyed her for a beat, hearing her heart race and knowing it was a lie, but letting it be. "I'm sure we can find something suitable for such a high-ranking vampire slayer," though it was meant as sarcasm, he couldn't stop them both from cringing.

Many things had been said in the days before the fight, hell they'd all but mounted one another during it, but now it was hard to know where they stood. Regardless of his evil deeds, Elizabeth had killed his father. She'd murdered him in front of Alucard and almost killed herself in the process. That was a lot for anyone to wrap their head around.

"We can work on the titles," she smiled, but the warmth not reaching her eyes.

"We can?" A spark of hope glistened in his soft eyes.

Elizabeth didn't know how to answer that either. We didn't mean the four of them, it had a far more complicated meaning and one that she hadn't fully comprehended before. What future existed for them? She would rather die than become a vampire, that much she was sure of, no matter how beautiful, or kind, or how graceful Alucard made it look. A vampire was still a monster, a perversion of life, and as much as she tried to fight her upbringing, it would never change that.

But she cared for him. That was a lie, she more than cared for him, she just couldn't admit that. Not to him, not aloud, but somewhere deep down, she knew she loved him. But what would love bring her in 10 years? 20 years? Hells, what would love bring her when she was old and blind, and Alucard was unchanged? That wasn't love, at least not the love she needed.

"Alucard, I-"