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Even after they were married, Vlad had periods of moodiness. Lisa wasn’t stupid; she knew where he went when he disappeared into the forests that seemed to be permanently attached to Castlevania. She knew he had to eat, and that despite her best efforts, he didn’t always stick to animals. She loved him in spite of it, though not for it. She tried endlessly of appealing to his sense of humanity. He had been human himself, once, lifetimes ago. He didn’t talk about it, but she knew that much. She was convinced that part of him still was, though he insisted she was wrong.
She tried not to be lonely when he was gone. Castlevania was vast, and there was more knowledge in Vlad’s libraries than she could learn in a lifetime, she knew. And she loved it here, loved the books and the scrolls and the devices from time that had been forgotten by most of the world. She travelled when she could, armed with knowledge of healing and medicine, and cured those who she could. Of course, even with all the hidden secrets of Vlad’s forgotten centuries, she could not cure everyone. Humans were still mortal, and they would still die. Those ones, she tried to at least ease peacefully.
When she realised she was going to have a child, she went back to the castle early. Vlad was off somewhere else as well. She was not really one for prayer, but she prayed he came back. She knew all about human babies and how to birth them. She had learned how to safely help women who didn’t want, or couldn’t safely carry, their children (though in most places it was hard to convince them that they wouldn’t be damned for it). She knew how to help with more birth complications than she imagined she would ever actually encounter. What she didn’t know was if the child growing inside her was viable.
Vlad was cagey about the nature of what he was. Of course, she had heard of monster hunters like the Belmont Clan, hunting down various creatures of the night. The Belmonts, it seemed, specialised in vampires. They had been wiped out long ago, or so Vlad had told her. There were no others now, largely because the Church would not allow it. Until Lisa had come to Castlevania, that was most unfortunate for humans. Now, Vlad was...gentler, if nothing else.
Still, he had never mentioned that they might create a child together. She hadn’t found any literature in his vast libraries that spoke of a union between humans and vampires. If there had been a child that was half of each, she had not found the record. But not everything was in the libraries; Vlad himself was a font of knowledge deeper than any other. If he did not know that this was possible, it either had never been done before...or it wasn’t.
She gathered things she would need to deal with miscarriages brought about by as many different biological problems as she could, and waited for him to return.
The pregnancy was difficult, and the birth was harder. Once Vlad came home and realised Lisa was pregnant, he stayed by her constantly. He wasn’t overly affectionate by nature, but he loved her entirely. In the last days before their child was born, Lisa saw worry on his face constantly. Worry was not a thing she’d seen on him before.
She assured him, in her matter-of-fact way, that things would be fine. Pain was normal during childbirth, after all. Of course, even Dracula, with his wealth of knowledge, knew nothing of the possibility of offspring between human and vampire. This was a first, and it was unexpected, to say the least.
The birth lasted for almost two days. Later, Lisa remembered very little of it. She didn’t dare send for a midwife, knowing Vlad’s refusal to share his secrets with others. The logical, scientific part of her mind agreed with him this time; she had no idea what was to happen, and she knew how superstitious midwives could be. So many refused to learn science-based medicine. She had accepted that, but now it left her alone.
In the last hours, Vlad finally summoned Hector. Hector was not a doctor, by any stretch of the imagination. He dealt with dead things, not with birth. Still, Vlad trusted him (even if Lisa wasn’t sure), and he wasn’t going to have a crisis of faith, or tell anyone their secrets. Lisa was too delirious with pain and exertion to argue.
Hector was visibly uncomfortable with the whole thing, but he did as his master asked and staunched the bleeding, while coaxing the baby to finally come into the world. Through the haze, Lisa heard him make some remark about resurrecting her if the birth killed her. She heard Vlad growl a response, though she couldn’t make out the words.
What felt like a lifetime later, she finally held their child in her arms. Even her scientific heart and logical mind felt that he was perfect, with his too-pale skin, shining, alert eyes, and tiny, pointed teeth.
She could not nurse him, because of those teeth — and because of the vampire part of him that wanted blood, and not his mother’s milk. That was an easy enough thing to fix, with ways of storing the milk her body produced. She took care of that part, and Vlad took care of the blood part.
He grew faster than a regular baby, by some measure. He didn’t exactly age years at a time, but he was bigger and stronger than a human baby would have been, and his mind was sharp. He talked before he was a year old, and he could run before he was two.
The first five years, Vlad, an unexpectedly good father, barely left Castlevania at all. He spent more time with Lisa than with young Adrian, being unsure of himself around someone so young. But he loved his son.
Sometimes, Lisa would sit and watch them together, poring over books, or talking about hunting. She couldn’t even find it in herself to be disgusted or upset with the frank manner that Vlad taught him about killing for food. Because he was a child, and had a child’s lack of adult morality, he was dangerous. Vlad taught him to kill, and Lisa taught him to care about killing. She didn’t want to raise a monster. In the end, neither did Vlad. He said he was monster enough for all of them. Lisa, as usual, disagreed.
Adrian was fully grown sometime in his teens. Lisa counted the years because time, for her, moved linearly; it made sense for time to progress on a set schedule. Vlad barely kept track at all; Lisa’s entire lifespan would be the blink of an eye to him. Adrian’s lifespan...well. No one really knew what that would be, though Lisa imagined he was closer to a vampire than a human in that regard. He would live for centuries, like his father. At least, she hoped he would. He was a fine young man, though given to brooding silences. She supposed being raised alone in the castle was part of that, and she was sorry she could not allow him to play with other children.
One thing that Adrian could do that his father could not, however, was walk with her in the sunlight. Castlevania kept constant night around it, but Lisa still sought out the sun beyond the grounds. She had been scared, at first, to grant her son’s wish to go with her.
In the end, Adrian did not share his mother’s love or need for the sunlight, but he was unharmed by it. He accompanied her when he was older because he wanted to be with her. She welcomed him, though they both knew he could not go with her when she went to serve as a doctor for the people. He was too young to have perfected pretending to be human.
For his part, Vlad told Adrian not to bother pretending.
When they were all at home, Lisa still watched them together. Vlad had enlisted several of his trusted generals to teach Adrian to fight. She disapproved slightly, but kept that to herself. She was a practical woman, after all, and she knew the dangers that vampires faced. Even with all their strength and skill, superstitious humans were a threat to them. Besides that, there was some rumour that the Belmont Clan was not actually extinct. Privately, she hoped she did not live to see a time where her husband and son were hunted by anyone that could actually harm them.
As he got older, Adrian’s temperament disagreed with Vlad’s. Vlad had centuries of rage inside him, though he had tempered down in the years Lisa had been here with him. Adrian did not have his rage, or his temper, but he was strong-willed, young, and curious about the world. He did not want to remain in the libraries. He ran off to study humans, despite Vlad’s expressed wish that he would not.
She knew they had fought sometimes, though that did nothing to change Vlad’s love for his son, or Adrian’s sort of childish idolization of his father.
She had never thought to have a family. She was married to her work, to science. When she had come to demand Dracula’s knowledge, she had never thought she would love the man inside the raging vampire she’d met. And she had certainly never thought they’d have a child. And what a child they had made. Adrian gave her hope that the separation between their kind was not forever. There would always be odds between them, given the vampires’ preferred food source. But still, she had hope. If she could have a family, even this odd, beautiful, cold family, then there was hope.
Lisa had gone back to her medical practise nearly right away, of course. She was happy with her family, but she felt that medicine was her calling, her purpose on the earth.
Vlad, too, continued his roaming. She had convinced him to travel as a man, to try to understand them. How could they expect Adrian to understand them, after all, if his father refused to try? Centuries of being a vampire had left him without empathy. Lisa did not want that to happen to their son.
Vlad was not home this time as she prepared to leave.
“Where are you going, Mother?” came a voice from the shadows. She hadn’t seen Adrian there; he was getting quite good at hiding. His father was good at it, too, though he so rarely bothered.
She stopped in the doorway and turned toward him. Though she hadn’t seen him, she was used to this sort of thing, and hadn’t jumped or started.
“I can’t stay away from my work,” she said.
Adrian regarded her with an unreadable expression for a moment before he spoke again, coming all the way into the light. He was taller than her now.
“They don’t deserve you,” he said, “but I know. That wasn’t an answer.”
Lisa smiled, just barely. Though he looked the part of an adult, he still had some of that teenage petulance. She didn’t usually mind much.
“Târgoviște,” she said.
“Does father know?” he asked.
“He always knows,” she said.
Adrian looked at her for another moment. He raised a hand, as if he might reach out and touch her. He was affectionate, in his way, but very rarely physically. He dropped his hand without actually reaching her.
“I hope you come home soon,” he said.
She pulled her hood up, pushing the door open. “I will,” she promised. Adrian stared after her as the door swung shut again.