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Chapter Text

Alucard has just come back from finishing off a deer, and is consequently still in wolf form, when he feels the familiar lurch.

No. It can’t be.

Human again so he can see out the window, he finds that the outside world is indeed growing blurry, skidding sideways out of visibility.

No sound of engines humming, as there hasn’t been for months. The castle is broken. It’s still broken. It can’t move.

Silently, the world outside his window fizzles, blurs again, and disappears into a cloud of amorphous smoke. When he blinks, it resolves itself into dark forest, the pines smaller and denser than he is accustomed to, peppered with snow despite the season.

A piece of machinery that’s smashed to pieces can’t malfunction. Something has moved the castle intentionally.

Under other circumstances he might clean his face and chest, still gruesome with deer’s blood. But “other circumstances” doesn’t mean facing an unknown threat, and he hasn’t felt particularly compelled to be presentable since…

Suffice it to say there is no possible good outcome to this situation. He calls his sword to his hand, dressing hurriedly in shirt and pants only after he’s armed. Then he marches out the front door, hears the other person’s drumming heartbeat and heavy breathing as soon as his foot leaves the threshold, and catches the charging enemy by the neck before they even see him.

Sypha. Good God.

He drops her into the snow and watches her cough without offering a bit of help, exactly as he’d planned to do when they met again. He’s changed. No use making it harder on either of them than necessary. “You moved the castle?”

She nods, still recovering her breath. The castle is perched… high up, the air thin as well as chill. On either side, a wall of mountains. How far uphill has she run to get to him? 

“The engines are broken.”

“Didn’t use the engines. Used magic,” she pants.

“When did you learn to operate a locating mirror?”

“Today.” The tone of her voice and the frankly undeserved look of anger she gives him says this is a waste of our time . She doesn’t remark on the blood congealing down his face and chest.

“That was a bit presumptuous, don’t you think? What makes you think I want to be here? And—” he hates himself for showing curiosity— “where is here, anyway?” 

“Styria.” 

“You brought the castle all the way to Styria? What, Buda wasn’t far enough for you?!”

Still catching her breath, Sypha gives no answer. 

This isn’t how he imagined their next meeting. In his mind, she and Trevor would saunter up to the castle, careless, only to be stopped by the gruesome, rotting bodies at his gate. They would approach with weapons drawn. He would float down from the upper staircase. Perhaps he and Trevor would fight again. And what would Sypha do? He can never bear to plan out that part. At any rate, they would know that he, like his father, is not to be taken advantage of. That is the important part, not the fight, but that they realize the petty evils of human beings and understand that he will not be coaxed into friendship like a stray cat, not anymore.

He has not imagined this, Sypha gasping at his feet, refusing to pick herself up out of the snow, refusing to talk. She is supposed to question him. What happened, Alucard? How did this happen? She hadn’t been there when he was alone and needed her, and now he’s changed in a way that can’t be undone. She is supposed to question him so that he can deny her answers.

But then she does rise from the ground, one arm cradling her ribs, lurid red and purple bruises blooming across one side of her face when her hood falls back. The snow beneath her is stained red with blood.

How did this happen? he means to ask. Instead, he says, “Where is Trevor?”

She points to the next peak and Alucard makes out the outline of a fortress, darker against the darkening sky. Fuck. He knows that place, knows the four women who reside there and call themselves sisters. Fuck.

Sypha catches her breath, looks him straight in the eyes, fierce and angry and scared, and says, “Help me.” 

Chapter Text

Sypha looks at him, lips parted, as familiar as ever. Affection twists in his stomach insistently, and with it comes fury, hotter and more dangerous than grief or purpose. She is sure that he will come to their aid. She’s waiting for him to respond.

He doesn’t. 

He simply turns around, walks into the castle, and shuts the door hard behind him because he is sick to death of being drawn into other people’s troubles with vampires. 

Sypha, being Sypha, is sure to follow. She’ll hammer on the door, or perhaps blow it open in a gust of wind. She might even burn it down, though he doubts that—much as she loves drama, she’s practical enough to want a front door on a fortress that she apparently considers as good as hers. She can insist that he help, and he will refuse, and then their relationship will deteriorate exactly as he has scripted.

Only she doesn’t besiege the door. Nothing happens. And once again, Adrian is alone with his thoughts. Because of course.

Does he want to help save Trevor? Not particularly. Every single time he’s aided human beings he has suffered a grievous loss. The way things are going, the next time may kill him.  Oh yes , says the piece of his mind that’s taken to treating himself with sarcasm in the absence of anyone else to snark at, Just think of all the plans you’ll have to cancel if you get killed rescuing Trevor.

It isn’t fear for his life holding him back—oh no, it certainly isn’t that. It’s the principle of the thing. What makes Sypha think he’ll help after she’s dropped him for months?

And anyway, his father always played the diplomat with the Council of Sisters. They are both cunning and well-fortified, and in their own home even Dracula had little chance of besting them. What chance does he, Adrian, have?

What does he want, then? Does he want Trevor to die at their hands? The heart that hasn’t done much of anything in his chest for two solid months jumps painfully. No, he does not want to go a lifetime without seeing Trevor again, if for no other reason than to have him answer for himself. 

When he opens the front door after long moments, Sypha stands right there on the step, wringing her hands and studying the handle. “Come in,” he says. 

...

He leads her towards Lisa’s laboratory. Sypha peeks in the kitchen as they walk past, perking up noticeably. “I am so thirsty.”

“No,” he says.

“All right,” she tells him meekly. Perhaps she is learning to be cautious of him. More likely, she’s behaving sweetly because she wants his help.

“You are injured,” he explains, doing his best to sound pragmatic rather than solicitous, wondering why he cannot simply settle for cruel and leave it at that. “Drink will aggravate certain internal injuries.”

“Dehydration will aggravate all of my injuries,” she mutters. Not cowed, then.

“Am I right to assume that Trevor is a prisoner in the palace? He did not fall down a hole again and get stuck?”

“Yes,” Sypha says, refusing to bristle at his tone. “A prisoner. Or at least...the last time I saw him, they were dragging him away… I assume they put him in the dungeon.”

“You hope,” Adrian corrects, not bothering to temper the condescension in his tone.

“I hope.”

“Because otherwise, he would be—”

“—I had to leave or be taken, myself.” She cuts him off abruptly. “And if they had us both, who would bring help?” 

“Sypha, what in the nine hells did the two of you get up to?”

She lets her eyes drift closed and for just a moment she sways as if she is going to fall. She doesn’t miss a step, though—instead she squares her shoulders and exhaustion comes through only in her voice.“We made it to Braila,” she explains. “Or nearly. We fought night creatures, no different from any of the others except for their eyes, glowing blue eyes.”

“One of the forgemasters’,” Adrian realizes.

“So he said. He begged for his life with information. He told us one of the vampires from Dracula’s court escaped—”

“—we expected as much—”

“—with a forgemaster in tow.”

“Oh.”

“Precisely. So we tracked them to see what we could find.”

“And you found more than you could handle. I’m sure you charged in as usual?” 

“It was supposed to be a stealth mission, Alucard!”

“And you took Trevor?”

She makes a pained, frustrated noise low in her throat, and he can’t help but think about how easy this is, how natural it feels to talk with her despite the very real danger. Things could be the same, exactly the same as they were before, and why shouldn’t they be? 

Because she is the best of them, and even the best of them will hurt you and leave you with the pain , snarls a voice inside of him.

Yes, but what if he wasn’t hurt? What if he just pretends that these past months have never happened?

He shows her into his mother’s examination room, the electrical lights that snap on with their entrance blinding in contrast to the dimness of the castle and the darkness of the outside world. “Sit.” He gestures to the bench.

Sypha blinks against the lights, disoriented. “What are we doing? This is not the armory. I told you, we do not have time for this! They could be killing him right now, or...or...turning him.”

“How long has he been in there?”

“Hours,” she mutters, hanging her head in shame.

“Then he could be dead or turned already. It will do you no good to go after him without a plan.”

“Me?” she asks. Not us? her tone says.

He sidesteps the question. “Everything I can see of you tells me that you are in no shape to take on a kingdom of vampires. And I can only see your neck and your head.” He makes a twisting motion with his fingers and she sighs in irritation and miraculously interprets it correctly, shrugging out of her heavy robe. She is apparently injured enough that the tabard under that and the black undergarment give her a genuine struggle. She peeks at him as she disrobes, trying to size him up.

“Are you hurt?” she asks at last, gesturing to his chest.

“No,” he says. “I was feeding when you decided to shove my home through a hole in time and space. Again.”

“Oh.” She refuses to take the bait and ask what he was eating. “I’m sorry.” 

He gets a glimpse of white torso as her head disappears inside her shirt, and all he can see for a moment is that segmented piece of her, naked from waist to neck, paler than the nude bodies he’s seen most recently and covered in gooseflesh, but still so similar, too close and too much. 

“Alucard?” He must have closed his eyes. He opens them to Sypha’s concerned frown, the black undershirt hanging over her arm. “Are you all right?”

“Fine.” He’s denying her answers, but she doesn’t know it so it fails to satisfy. 

The two of them put her back together with judicious use of salve and bandages, and while they do so, she tells him her plan.

It is terrible.

“They must have a hundred guards, all vampires. I cannot sneak to him and I cannot fight my way through. But you, Alucard—” Here, she sizes him up. “You can do both.”

He’s struck with the strangest sense of disorientation, like his stomach is spinning with no ground beneath his feet, like he is standing outside of himself. She thinks she knows him. Once again, it is so easy to believe that she knows him. But she knows little of his early life and nothing of the person he became after she and Trevor left, and he watches her animated talk through the great chasm of four months’ absence. “I cannot fight a hundred vampires,” he says.

“No, but— You can find him without being seen. You can…” she struggles for words… “you can slide out of a place altogether and appear somewhere else. I have never seen another vampire do that. You can find him, and you can get him out.”

“While you do what?”

“Distract them. You accomplish the objective. I will be the muscle.”

“Oh, so you are going to fight the hundred vampires,” he says dryly.

“I can,” she insists. “You don’t know; you haven’t been here.”

And whose fault is that? he thinks. Aloud, he says, “Indeed I have not, but I know those women, and I know that you were beaten the last time. And that was when Trevor was with you, and before you dropped a castle on their neighboring mountaintop—not exactly subtle, Sypha. They’ll be waiting for you.”

She glares at him and he finds one way, at last, that he can twist the knife more deeply. “But please,” he adds, “tell me about how you can fight them all. Tell me why this is not merely throwing your life away.”

She’s been injured, so far. Concerned, even pliable, frightened, angry, but always on the defensive. Now she flares to life, fire dancing in her hands, everything that is dangerous in Sypha waking up and extending its tentacles like lashes. “Do you think I care?! Do you think I would not burn the world down for him?”

And the blow has found its mark. Do you think I would not burn the world down for him? For him? She’s come to Alucard for help because she has no other choice, she’s come to him because it’s Trevor that she loves, and because he loves her. Aloud, he tells her, “My father said those words.” 

She’s breathing heavily, nostrils flaring with each breath, her mouth pressed shut in a furious line. “Except my human can still be saved.”

...

Trevor hasn’t quite given up on being saved, and that’s what makes him determine to keep his mouth shut. Well...that and the blood dripping down his face and across his lips. At least it’s his own blood. Small blessings.

When they took him, he laid heavy odds that they would kill him right then. When they didn’t, he thought they would drag him to the dungeon and kill him later. Later was good.

He had not expected to be marched up the stairs, to this small, round room in what was surely a tower and manacled with his hands above his head. The windows are shuttered—of course, it must be late afternoon by now.  He tugs experimentally at the chains attached to his wrists.  If he can rip the ring loose from the wall, he can use the manacles themselves as a weapon. 

They don’t budge.

His actual weapons, the sword and the Morning Star, lie trustingly across the room on a table. Those are a distinct hope as well, as is the overconfidence that allows them to be in the same room as him. 

The door opens.

He knows them for vampires as soon as they enter the room, years of training recognizing that distinctive walk, like some big, agile cat slowing itself down to stalk its prey. He doesn’t need to see the fangs. Two of them—only two, despite the dozens of guards who had kicked his ass with such diligence earlier. A blond woman, paler even than Alucard, and a darker one, smaller and fine-boned. Their hands are empty. Obviously, he is not a threat to them. 

Well, that can change.

“You, sir,” drawls the blond, “have caused quite a bit of trouble. I like trouble, but generally only when I am the one inflicting it. So we are going to have a little chat.”

Trevor does what he always does when he’s scared—he acts like a shit. “Oh, thank Christ. I was afraid you were going to invite me to dinner.” 

Okay, he lied about keeping his mouth shut.

Her lips part, and Trevor steels himself to be bitten. Instead she laughs, while her companion frowns in irritation. “Less show,” the companion says. “More substance.”

“Quite right.” And then the blond reaches for Morning Star where it lies on the table before her. “Careful!” says the other, but she’s already yelped and dropped it, singed. The civilized act has gone up with the smoke from her hands. She whirls in anger and pain and slaps him full across the face, whipping his head to the side with the force of that blow. A joint pops—he hears it as well as feeling it. His neck doesn’t snap in two, but it’s telling that he finds this a comfort. 

“What in Hecate’s legion is this abomination?” she demands.

“If you had listened to me before barging in—” the dark one sounds tired— “I would have told you that this—I think—is the Morning Star. And this—” now she strides towards Trevor, bending him forward with a hand at his neck as easily as if he were a rag doll and getting a look at the back of his shirt—”is the crest of the Belmonts. Which makes this —” Trevor finds himself abruptly facing them again, a hand curled tightly in his hair, lifting him to the tips of his toes— “the Belmont boy who took out Dracula last spring.”

Well, he stinks at subterfuge anyway. Ha ha, Trevor. This is fine.

Nose-to-nose, she peers into his face as if trying to discern some secret. Her teeth perch inches from his throat, and every one of his ancestors screams at him to snap her neck. Predator, his blood sings.

The pale one has dropped his whip a mere two feet from him—half a room closer than it had been, but out of reach of even the tip of his toe. It might as well be back in Wallachia for all the good it does him.

“Honestly, Carmilla,” her companion says. “Read a history book.” Her tone is bored, but she doesn’t look away from him as they speak and he swears he feels a squirming and fluttering at the edges of his mind. That’s not real, though. Vampires can’t really get into people’s heads like that.

“This is a Belmont?” The blond—Carmilla, so at least they’ve come to the right vampire-infested fortress in Styria—raises her eyebrows in disdain. “I thought they built them tougher.”

“Perhaps he stumbled and staked Dracula through the heart. The man always did let his guard down around humans.”

“Perhaps. His weapons are good, though. Striga will want them for the vault.”

“ She will know better than to touch a strange, silver thing.” The dark one drops him, having lost interest without finding whatever she’s looking for. “You may proceed with your method of questioning.”

Trevor finds himself regretting that he has absolutely nothing to tell them.

“Oh, yes. Questions, questions. First—” Carmilla taps his nose with one red-painted claw— “Are you injured?”

A broken arm which screams with such pain, held over his head like this, that he can barely think. Damage to his side that feels like he’s been trampled by an ox. More disturbingly, a rush of pain and pressure every time he takes a deep breath that means he is bleeding into some body cavity. Even if he fights his way out without getting hit again, the fight might kill him. “I’m the picture of health,” he grinds out between clenched teeth, “though your hospitality stinks. I’d hate to see what you do to traveling salesmen.”

Carmilla laughs again, her voice the sweet shrill of off-pitch bells. “Oh, he has a mouth on him! Good, you can tell me things, then. How did you find us, little Belmont, and what did you come for?”

“Big fucking castle on top of a hill,” he answers. “Didn’t see a ‘no soliciting’ sign. Would you like to buy a family Bible?”

“Would you hit him again, Morana?” she asks the other one, as if it is a philosophical question.

Morana—it is strangely relieving to have names to give him the slightest scrap of control over the situation—shrugs. “It won’t do any good, but if it makes you happy.” Trevor has his eyes on her, where she reclines bored against the wall. He doesn’t even see Carmilla move, only feels the blow land hard under his chin, driving his head back, baring his neck again. She isn’t even all that fast. He’s slowing down, made stupid with pain.  

“Quite right,” she says, instantly as composed as ever. “We need not be cruel without reason. So I’ll ask you again—what on Earth brings you so far from Wallachia?”

“The life of a travelling merchant knows no borders,” he says as sincerely as he can manage. 

This time he sees it coming. She takes a step back and then drives the toe of her foot into his ribs, where it lands with a squish like a rotten gourd. Something burbles inside, dangerously injured, so instead of taking a real breath he breathes shallow and steady, his focus on Morning Star out of the corner of his eye.

“Try again,” she suggests.

He’s exhausted their patience—that didn’t take very long— and now he needs a real strategy. His breathing, his heartbeat, even his smell make him an open book to someone with her senses. And despite the mishap with the whip, she isn’t stupid. An out-and-out lie won’t work. He’ll have to keep her talking without revealing too much. Give enough that she doesn’t injure him mortally in the interrogation, withhold enough that she doesn’t just kill him when she has what she wants. “A little bird told me you’d made a new friend,” he says. 

Another kick to his side, and this time her foot sinks in with a dull crunch.  Trevor winces and groans in spite of himself. Over Carmilla’s shoulder, Morana watches with renewed interest.

“Quite right,” he gasps, blood on his lips. “It was a werewolf.”

“Keep going, sweet boy, and maybe we’ll turn you instead of killing you.”

Morana snorts as if she is reluctant to give this joke the satisfaction of laughter. Trevor can’t decide if that means they’re serious or not.

“Did you?” Trevor asks, because if he’s going to be pumped for information, he might as well get some in turn and because he’s rubbish at half-truths and virtually everything else that involves words. “Was that you who marched out of Braila with a new friend?”

Carmilla’s brows draw together, dangerous. Yes, then. 

“I cannot decide,” says Morana, “whether he is very clever or very stupid.” 

Carmilla cups one hand around his face and squeezes. The other digs in beneath his jaw, forcing his tongue out through his mouth. “Careful,” she tells him, and her talons dig in, punctures drawing blood on his cheeks. He is reminded abruptly that torture holds a thousand horrors more prolonged than death and he forces down panic with the most irreverent thing he can think of: Sypha is going to be very put out if he loses his tongue. Then the claws retract, she drops Trevor as far to the ground as the manacles will allow him to go, and she licks his blood from her finger thoughtfully.“He is very mortal,” she says. “His choices are limited.” 

He can say nothing like this, merely breathe and wait and hope that Sypha has the opportunity to yell at him about what happened to your face this time, Trevor?

Slumped against the wall, held up only by Carmilla’s hand, though, he can inch his leg towards the chain on the floor.

“Carmilla, you know how off-putting I find it when you play with your food.”

“Just a moment.” Carmilla finishes with the blood on her fingers and turns back to him. Don’t look at my feet , he wills, not either of you . He tries to have an interesting face.

“And the other?” Carmilla asks, “Where is she?”

Wild joy springs into his chest at this question. “A thousand miles from here by now. She can teleport.”

“Now you see,” Morana says sadly, “that was a lie.”

Trevor has almost resigned himself to dying—almost—if he can keep their attention on him. Cause some trouble. Give Sypha a chance to get farther away. She must have been hurt or she wouldn’t have left him, but she couldn’t have been badly hurt, to hop over the wall as fast as she had. He thanks all the saints that she was smart enough to run when they’d been overpowered; he frankly hadn’t expected it of her. I’ll bring help. She hadn’t said it, but her eyes had met his in that last moment, and she’d told him all the same. I’ll come back. I’ll bring help.

If they’re asking, she has hours of headstart on them. Still, she’ll need him to buy her time.

Trevor’s toe slips under Morning Star, and he resolves to die as slowly as possible. His heartbeat ticks up.

“Watch him!” Morana calls a half-second before he kicks, but Carmilla has sensed it too, and she closes her hand around his throat.

Trevor slams his head flat against the wall, denying her the angle she needs to break his neck for the fraction of a moment it takes for Morning Star to fly from his foot to his hand. 

And there’s nothing they can do to stop him. Carmilla jumps back, having learned what the whip’s touch can do. She plasters herself against the far side of the room with her companion. “He’s still chained!”

But Trevor doesn’t need to reach them. Instead, he leaps into the air, pulling himself on his good arm and gaining enough leverage to catch the chain on his bad arm, changing its direction. The mace smashes against the closed window with enough force to shatter a minotaur’s body. The wooden shutters don’t stand a chance.

Sunlight floods the room, followed by smoke and the smell of charring flesh. Both women throw themselves out the door. 

“Guards!” shouts one—Trevor doesn’t have time to worry about which—but the other says, “No! Don’t you dare.”

He is still trapped, even if his cage has grown a bit larger. He needs to get free of the chains or he won’t have a chance. ( A chance to what? he wonders. But the animal part of his mind screams at him to fight and flee, no matter how bad the odds. And anyway, he is buying Sypha time.)  

One side is hurt too badly to risk. He braces his legs against the ground, grasps the chain that binds him in his good hand, and tugs with all of his might.

Nothing budges.

“Give me your cloak.” “Don’t be foolish.” A shuffle outside the door. It won’t take them more than a minute to plan. Can he get free in one minute?

He wraps Morning Star around his hand, as tight as it will go, and slams it into the wall.

Nothing. 

Again. Nothing. No, wait—dust. The mortar, beginning to come apart. He braces his legs wide and goes to work as methodically as a thresher, swinging the mace on its chain upwards, over his head. Thunk, thunk, thunk. Powder and pebbles rain down on him..

He reacts to the movement at the door before his brain can even register what it is, unfurling Morning Star, turning it back into a weapon. At the same time, he heaves as hard as he can with his good side.

The ring binding him comes free from the wall.

And Morning Star hits nothing, because it’s not a person rushing him at all.

Chains in both hands, he raises them as best he can, prepared to strike. He actually DOES strike, moving in the reflexive figure-eight pattern that covers all angles against an unseen enemy.

And finally, his brain registers the object that had flown at him before—a damp, sickly flame from a rag attached to a clay jar. Motes of dust catch the golden light of the sunset, a haze in the room thicker than the falling mortar. Is that…?

The jar explodes in a blast of smoke and powder. Trevor brings his arm up to guard his eyes but can’t do anything about the ill-timed breath. He needs to breathe.

Then his leg goes to jelly and he slumps to one knee. His arms hang bonelessly at his sides as he wills them to work. Nothing. Not even a tremble from his muscles. The other leg goes and he collapses in a useless puddle as he realizes—there’s something in the smoke. 

His brain, in contrast to the rest of his body, still registers everything that happens, and as Carmilla advances on him in the safety of this heavy cloud, he is vaguely annoyed that whatever they’ve put in this stuff, they’ve managed to make it smell like sulfur.

Mostly, though, he’s just terrified.

Armored guards rush the room, but Carmilla holds up an angry hand and they stop. “No! Get away from him! He is no threat now, not without his magic weapons.” She’s looking at him differently now, with that same appraising expression her associate had worn. “And blood that lets a human fight like that? I want that.”

She lifts him by the neck. He can’t tell whether his feet are touching the ground or dangling in the air, and he is out of time.

Carmilla opens her mouth and he closes his eyes. All pain is gone under the effects of the gas, but he can feel the twist of his body as she positions him, and he can hear the crunch of teeth against flesh. His body goes cold as his blood leaves it, and he feels that, too.

The last thing he hears is her polished voice: “Surprisingly delicious, these vampire hunters.”

...

He wakes in a dungeon, though “wakes” might be overselling it. His stomach burbles and his lungs bubble with each breath he takes, and he can’t muster the attention to tell whether his eyes are open or not.

A hand closes in his hair and yanks at it sharply. His head comes up, baring his throat. Awake, then, and able to feel pain again. And conscious of when his neck is laid open to a vampire, even when half-dead.

Carmilla again. “Where is it?!” she hisses into his ear, furious.

He has no fucking idea what she’s talking about, but he’s Trevor Belmont, so of course he answers in the stupidest possible way. “I don’t know. You had it last.”

A smack across his face that splits his cheek, gratitude blooming with pain. If she’d hit his torso again, he would have died.

“ You don’t have it. We searched you thoroughly.” 

“Fun the first time,” he mutters.

“Your little witch girlfriend has it. Tell me where she is, or we’ll rend her limb from limb when we find her.”

It is such an absurd threat—if they plan to dismember her, why would he ever tell them where she is?—that it cuts through the haze of pain and sickness, and in that moment of clarity he realizes: Carmilla is desperate. Whatever she’s lost, she’s in a panic.

What has Sypha gotten away with? All this for a locating mirror? Trevor’s seen three of them this year. He wants to say something witty, but instead his eyes have closed again, and he must be dying, because the vampire’s hand against his face feels blissfully cool.

“We’ll find her,” chimes a new voice, light and melodious. “We’ll get it back.”

Run, Sypha , he thinks. Whatever you have, whatever it is that they think you have, run run run and don’t look back.

“Maybe I should search him again,” Carmilla snarls. “Maybe he hid it up his rectum. Or swallowed it.” A red-painted claw flashes in front of his cracked eyes. “Maybe I should cut open his stomach and check.”

“Oh, don’t!” says the new voice. “Humans are so warm inside. Can you imagine what will happen if he’s swallowed it?” A peal of laughter, this one pleasant instead of jarring. “Let’s just wait, and keep him alive for the entertainment.”

How could he have swallowed a mirror? 

“I’m not sure that’s wise, Lenore. He is not an injured puppy.”

“Come, he’s dying anyway, and just think about having all that blood fresh! I am told—” and here the voice goes coy— “that he is delicious.”

“Are you mocking me?”

“Only waiting my turn.”

“Fine, take him. I’ve wasted enough time today on a dead end.”

Carmilla drops him to the ground and Trevor doesn’t have the strength to brace for the sharp pain of landing. Not dead , he thinks grimly. Pain means not dead . How embarrassing would it be for the last of the Belmonts to die from being dropped against a stone floor?

The shadowy presence, the lovely voice, moves closer. Small, this one, with lots of hair and the sweetest face. Fuck, no , Trevor thinks, years of experience with monsters making it clear instantly what he’s up against. Here, at last, is the biggest threat in this castle.

She dips her face to his neck and kisses the pulse point in his shoulder sweetly before choosing a spot just below it. Then, all in a flash, she rears her head back and clamps down.

This time it hurts.

The vampire—Lenore—keeps a hand on his face as she drinks, and Trevor tries to summon the will at least to jerk his head away from her. When she finishes not a trace of blood remains on her lips and the handkerchief she produces to dab at them comes away pristine. “We won’t turn you right now,” she says sweetly. “In fact, I rather doubt Carmilla will let us turn you at all.”

Thanks a fucking lot , he doesn’t manage to say.

Either way,” Lenore shrugs, “it’s best to let the cattle drip-dry a bit before finishing them.” She pats his face again. “Don’t worry. Whatever happens afterwards, you’ll die very naturally.” She checks his manacles one last time before turning to someone he hasn’t realized is waiting just outside his cell. “Next.” 

Chapter Text

If Adrian somehow survives, if someone tells this part of the story many years from now, they will portray him as a reluctant, irritated participant. Having his dinner when he is inconvenienced by yet another silly pair of humans, drawn into the drama of lives that are short and easily ended, rolling his eyes at the series of mishaps that are bound to befall him. It will be a comedy. People will laugh.

They will know nothing of this moment, standing on the bare mountainside with the wind whipping him fiercely, staring into the void between mountains and at the dark of mountains against the sky, freezing, with no plan, just after nightfall, ready to die.

Sypha strains to see the far peak, undaunted by the dark, afraid only that they are taking too much time. Still, she pauses and turns to him to ask, “You are sure about this?”

“I said I would help, didn’t I?”

She hesitates, trying to read his face, but it’s dark.

When she asked the first time, he had wanted to tell her no, that he no longer trusted any of them to think about him except in terms of what they could take. But he couldn’t bear to have her think he was playing coy, and in truth he was never going to let the two of them die.

So here they are.

“The floating thing you do—” Back on topic, Sypha waves her hand vaguely, approximating nothing like his defiance of gravity. “Can you get yourself to the fortress?”

“Can I fly there, you mean?” he asks, letting the absurdity of the question sink in.

Absurdity is lost on Sypha. “Yes.”

“Yes.”

For the first time, she smiles. “Good. Let’s go.” Then she flicks her wrist and stairsteps appear in the sky, made of delicate, glistening ice. She takes off at a run, building for herself as she goes.

“Good God,” he mutters before he remembers himself and follows.

He beats her to the other side, but it’s a near thing. “Can you go through the wall?” she asks, huffing in the thin air. “With that fading out thing you do?” 

“No.” It’s merely an illusion paired with increased speed, and it won’t fool anything but a lesser vampire. This might not be the best time to tell Sypha that, though.

“Drain it is, then.”

Adrian sighs, long suffering, but Sypha doesn’t seem to notice. “You know,” she says instead, “I was very glad to discover that vampires shit and piss, too. I suppose anything that still has to eat needs to excrete somehow, but without the heart beating, I did not know for certain…”

Irritation fights with affection. Of course Sypha would approach this situation as an opportunity for study.

“Here!” Hundreds-of-years-old vampires are not quite as short-sighted as humans...which is to say that they recognize the risk and build smaller drains. Still, if Adrian goes on his hands and knees...

This is going to absolutely ruin his pants. “It smells like Trevor.”

Sypha looks at him disapprovingly. “It smells like someone gorged on blood sausages and got the runs.”

“The two of you are both disgusting, you know that?”

She rocks on her heels, unfazed. “Thank you, Alucard.”

The drain is covered by a silver grate—good against vampires, solid enough to keep out humans. Doubly effective against him. “I can’t—”

“I’ve got it.”

He thinks she’s planning to take out the stone around it and cautions, “Quiet!” but she goes for the far more difficult task, instead. She grasps the bars and her hand goes red hot, and then white, and then blue. Nothing happens for long minutes. Then, under her touch, the bars liquefy. Adrian jumps out of the way as the silver washes down the drain and over the side of the mountain into a small stream the runoff has cut through the trees.

“It will be warded,” he says, instead of “well done.”

“I took some of the wards down on the way in. I doubt they have gotten them back up yet, if they’ve even discovered the problem.” Sypha looks extremely self-satisfied.

“It will be guarded, then.”

“Probably.” She frowns, thinking. “I will draw most of them away. Do you know where the dungeons are?”

“No.”

“But I thought you said you had been here before?”

“I was a child; I wasn’t exactly taken on a tour of the dungeons. Or the larder; probably they are the same thing.” 

“Then…” 

“I’ll find him,” Adrian says shortly. 

She considers him for a long moment. Then she says, “Good luck, my friend,” goes on her tiptoes, and kisses him on the cheek.

Adrian shivers.

Sypha, having already pulled away, doesn’t notice.

“Wait,” he says.

She turns, questioning.

“Hit what you can, and then get out.”

“Of course.”

“I’m serious. If they come back too early… I can handle it. Don’t put yourself at risk to buy me time.”

She nods, then she’s gone.  

Adrian watches her until she’s rounded the corner of the castle wall, moving far more quickly than any human has a right to do. Then he eyes the drain, inhales deeply, and starts climbing. He should save his strength for the inevitable fighting. Still, if he does what Sypha calls his “sliding through space thing,” he can be out of here before he has to breathe in the stench. Priorities, after all.

…

Wait for me. She should have said, Wait for me , but she hadn’t thought of it, had thought only of the necessity of getting Trevor out now . And now she has to create a distraction fast, before Alucard’s luck runs out and he finds himself caught, as they had.

She melts the snow in front of her, refreezes it into solid ice, and skates herself across it towards the far wall of the castle, which is faster and more efficient than flying. She’d hesitated to use fire before lest they be caught, but now...her job is to be caught.

Here. The wall is so high here that it will also be weaker. It should take less effort to make a spectacular mess. The snow helps. She piles it against the stonework and then slashes her hand upwards and adds to it, a solid sheet of ice, working so quickly that the ice makes a sound when it lands— thump , like a giant knocking at the door. Another fling of her arm and a second ice wall, bigger, forms atop it. Sypha cups her hands into a ball and expands them—quickly, but not so quickly that she loses the spell. The ice at the top of the wall expands. THUMP. Creeeeak. She thinks absurdly of the wolf knocking at the door in all of those children’s stories. Let. Me. In. That ought to bring them running. 

The castle is well-built, she has to give them that. Another ramp of snow, another top-heavy  flower of ice on a bent stem, and then she pushes .

The outer wall sways and groans like an old ship in bad weather. 

She cradles the spell in her hands with the greatest of care and then forces it harder, extending her arms straight outwards.

The wall collapses in a dramatic pile of rubble.

Shouts on the other side. She’s already drawn guards, at least, and from the sounds at the far side of the courtyard, more are coming. She is desperate, yes, but also possessed of a cold fury that is willing to measure out its strength and exact destruction for a long, long time. Her pulse sounds in her ears, her intent sharp as a sword, a whip, a needle. Let them come. She’s looking forward to a rematch.

...

Adrian stops in the mouth of the drain, scouting. As expected, an armored guard stands just beyond it, monitoring the entrance and that entire section of the courtyard. He has no doubt that the sisters run a tight ship; the watchman will make his scheduled round in a moment. When he passes by the drain, Adrian can incapacitate him before he has a chance to sound the alarm.

He waits for long moments for the man to move, during which time he catches sight of a second guard just outside the sewer’s entrance. That complicates his plan somewhat. But he never has a chance to re-tool it because:

Thunk . The sound reverberates in the cold night air.

Both guards turn to face it. Adrian counts to twenty and stills his breathing; he knows better than to strike before his moment.

THUNK.

He seizes the opportunity and dashes across the open alleyway before the noise has faded.

The nearest door is locked, but he has only to wait for a moment before the wall at the far end of the courtyard topples in a terrific disaster. Then the door flies open, soldiers streaming out. Adrian simply lurks behind the open door like a child playing hide-and-seek until they’ve filed past him, intent on the breach.

For a split second he sees Sypha standing atop the castle wall, fire in her hands and ice spinning around her like some protective centrifuge. Then he reminds himself that Sypha is not his responsibility and he darts in the door before him.

He finds himself in a narrow corridor, the steps leading downwards. This is the dangerous part; Adrian slips down the stairs as quickly and silently as he can before anyone else comes up. At their foot the corridor branches out, halls crossing it and rooms on either side. Good, now he has places to hide if necessary. The castle is not deserted, though it’s well on its way to being so, and none of the people rushing past him with weapons has time to poke around for intruders. Sypha is really delivering on that distraction.

He flattens himself against the wall in a crosshall as a group of archers rushes past him. He’d better hurry. 

Where to go, where to go...think.   As large as the castle is on the outside, of course more must tunnel into the mountain below ground-level; it will be safer for vampires that way. He can’t count on simply moving downwards and finding the dungeons.

Think. You’ve studied architecture. The structure itself is a traditional star fortress, though the towers, built along more delicate and modern lines, are a clear boast. Is it old enough to have been used by humans before the sisters moved in and renovated, or have they built it themselves? He doesn’t know, so he can’t count on a human-friendly layout.

A clattering along the hall in front of him. He slips through an open doorway as a group moves past, talking amongst themselves about the armory. Not guards, though. The guards will be stationed along the edges for quick access to the outside. The sisters won’t want windows in their quarters perhaps, but they will want a vantage from which to survey the land, which means that their rooms will be up high. Had those towers included windows, or only balconies? Storage below; nobody wants to walk past a mass of barrels on their way to the front door, and placing them above the ground level is inefficient—even vampires won’t love carrying all that weight upstairs for no reason. The dungeons, then, are either very high or very low. He’ll have to take a chance.

Low is better. Less risk of being caught in a less populated area.

Decided, he slips out of the room…

...and comes face-to-face with the burliest vampire he’s ever seen. The man’s mouth opens in surprise, and then Adrian catches the glint of torches off of the blacksmith’s tongs because the vampire raises them, ready to strike him down.

No time to draw his sword. Instead, he bares his fangs. “I say, what are you doing?”

The man hesitates for a moment. “You don’t belong here. I can hear your heartbeat.”

“Well.” He crosses his arms. Nothing in my hands , this signals. Clearly not a threat . “I’d like to see you tell the Lady Carmilla that.”

The man lowers the tongs, instead brandishing them at Adrian’s chest to punctuate every word he’s saying. “Who are you? See here, the castle’s under attack. You’ll have to come along with me, you half-breed, and answer for yourself.”

“Don’t you think everyone’s a bit busy for that?” he asks mildly. Then he throws himself backwards, making room for his sword to slip from its scabbard, and sends it straight for the vampire’s head, catching him in the throat and slicing cleanly through his neck. A moment later all that remains of his opponent is a pile of ashes. He feels a mild, distant pity for this person who was unlucky enough to get in the way, but he hadn’t, after all, signed up to negotiate his way to Trevor.

When he takes back his sword and rises—perhaps he’d best leave it unsheathed—a man stands at the far end of the corridor, staring at him. Not a vampire; he can hear the heartbeat. A man.

“You fight well,” the man says mildly. He brushes silver hair back from his face, though he looks too young for the color. 

“You are the forgemaster.”

“I think perhaps you should come with me.”

Adrian is on him in two steps, sword held to his throat, but the man merely blinks. “Please,” he says dryly, and Adrian’s not sure whether it’s a dismissal of his threat or a genuine entreaty to kill him.

No time to wonder. “The human,” he says, “the one they brought in this afternoon. You know where he is.” Don’t ask questions of your enemies , his father’s voice sounds in his head. Conversation gives them power; they have none.

“No,” the forgemaster tells him. “I know nothing of that.” He turns.

Adrian jabs him in the back, none too gently. The blade cuts through the broadcloth coat, and he wouldn’t be surprised to find that he’s drawn blood. “I do apologize, but I can’t let you walk away alive.” Even if he never finds Trevor, finding the forgemaster like this—though the man hasn’t actually confirmed his identity—means that he can finish their mission. Kill him here, prevent the threat of another undead army. If he wants to, that is.

The silver-haired man sighs. “They have not told me about your friend. But I can certainly show you where they keep their prisoners.”

“And…” Adrian feels foolish at this sudden turnabout. He forgets his father’s rule. “Why would you?” 

“Trust me, I have as much to gain as you. Roll up that carpet with what’s left of the smith on it; we can stash it in the side room.

Adrian doesn’t lower his sword. “You roll it.”

Another long sigh. “Fine.”

Two minutes later—a long time for Sypha to hold out against a small army—they are on their way. His guide leads him straight, into the interior of the castle, and then downwards. Hah , Adrian thinks, I was right . Down a level past what look like council rooms, and then another, descending a twisting staircase. The forgemaster stops at its base, gaze flicking to something over Adrian’s shoulder. 

He catches the movement immediately and knows it for what it is—betrayal. Moving vampire-fast, he pulls the man in front of him, blade at his throat, and whirls to face whatever has caught his eye. 

Nothing but a closed door.

His guide coughs insistently, and Adrian eases the blade off his throat—a bit, anyway. He keeps the forgemaster in front of him while he turns slowly, 360 degrees, examining their surroundings.

Behind him, a stone archway with a metal gate across it. He knows what that means: he’s found his destination. Behind the closed door on the other side of the landing, silence. Still, Adrian can’t help but wonder—had the forgemaster been expecting someone?

“I am forbidden from showing you the dungeons,” his now-prisoner tells him, voice a bit strained. “As I am forbidden a great many other things.”

“You brought me close enough, though.” He lets go, keeping the man carefully in range of his sword. “I don’t understand what you gain from this. Why are you working for them? And if you are, why help me?”

Footsteps sound below, climbing the stairs from the dungeon. The jingle of keys on a ring.

“Let’s just say—” the man raises his voice, “—that you can do a favor for me, as well.”

“Hector?”

Adrian flattens himself against the wall in a small area that might charitably be called a niche but is doing little for his ability to hide. 

“Is that you?” The keys rattle at the gate. Someone’s unlocking it. “You know you’re not supposed to be down here anymore, dear. I’m happy to give you the run of the castle proper, but—”

The caller emerges, small and wide-skirted and markedly vampiric. Afforded no real cover, Adrian steps into the hall, raising his sword.

Eyes wide, mouth a perfect, surprised circle, the vampire looks at him. “Oh.”

Hector takes a step back with the clear expression of someone who’s solved two problems at the same time and Adrian’s mind, busy processing what form of betrayal this might be, misses the split-second in which he might have taken advantage.

The next thing he knows the little vampire is gone from her place at the mouth of the dungeon, reappearing right in front of him, grabbing his neck with her claws. He blinks and realizes she’s used his own trick against him. 

It is no huge feat to slide out of her grasp, to put on speed, to twist around behind her, but then it is no trick for her, either, to evade his grip.

But she’s a fraction of a second too slow this time, and he gets his hands on the back of her skirts and pulls.

She whirls and uses the only weapon in her hands, throwing the heavy ring of keys directly at his face. Adrian blinks, instinctively protecting his eyes. The next thing he knows her hand is in his hair, vampire strength pulling him down to crack his skull against the floor. Only she’s underestimated his own strength. Instead of going, Adrian grabs her hard by the shoulders, and when she lets go of his hair to fight with his hands, he shoves.

She flies across the hallway so hard she hits the wall where it makes a turn at the opposite end. He squares up, watching her spring to her feet, ready for her next move.

Her next move is to turn tail and run, putting on that same superhuman sprint to get away from him. He lets her go because he’s found the dungeon and she’s left him the keys, of all the good luck that could befall him, but he knows she’ll be back with help.

He looks back to Hector, to berate him or ask him what he’s playing at or kill him, and finds the man gone, as well.

Quickly, Adrian , he tells himself. You are here for your speed .

The dungeon is not empty. He wrenches open as many doors as he can, keys in the other hand with no time to stop and try them. When he finally finds Trevor’s cell, he does not think the man is in it at first—only a bundle of clothes on the floor with the distinctive Belmont gold. Have they taken him somewhere? Is he dead?

The door fairly flies off its hinges at his touch and Adrian sees that it is not a pile of clothes after all, but Trevor Belmont himself, lying in such a heap that he wonders at first if his bones are still intact.

Or if he is alive. Adrian can’t hear a heartbeat.

He leans in close, puts his cheek to Belmont’s face. There—the slightest puff of air. His heart must still be beating; he’s breathing. Faintly, though. Adrian is not at all convinced he’ll survive the process of escaping. He doesn’t panic, of course; he has great experience with winning only to find that he’s lost everything, and instead of panic the thing that floods his veins is ice, a necessary numbness in the face of a world which holds nothing for him and therefore leaves him nothing to lose. He doesn’t care, refuses to care so intensely that the ice in his stomach turns to sickness.

As gently as he can—which is not nearly gently enough given the circumstances—he lifts Trevor onto his shoulders. “Time to go,” he says. “We’ve outstayed our welcome.”

Trevor says nothing, so Adrian’s voice fills in his part in his head, what he would have said, had he been conscious: That’s no good. We weren’t all that welcome to begin with. 

…

Sypha Belnades is in her element. At least three elements, actually.

Her shield of ice spins around her like a whirlwind. No sword strike is fast enough to get through it, and even most arrows will glance off. Occasionally she breaks off a shard and sends it whistling through the air, deadly, towards an opponent. Mostly, though, her weapons are fire and lightning and wind, shifting into life in each of her hands by turns.

Sypha will never admit to it, but she is not always a fantastic shot. Today, though, her opponents are so thick that every blow lands on someone. And today her aim is perfect because it has to be. 

The guards in the courtyard fall to a wall of fire, the last one leaping into the air only to be impaled on a blade of ice. Then they send in an entire wave, armored vampires rushing from the fortress towards her. This is perfect; she knocks them back with a gale blast all at once. In the moments she’s bought herself, her wind lifts stones from the wall of rubble beneath her—pebbles, rocks the size of her fists, small boulders. They wobble and try to slip past the edges of her mind, but she balances them carefully, keeping her grip…

Then she throws her arms outwards as if flinging handfuls of sand and the rubble goes with it, crushing armor and burying soldiers. The ones who rise are easy enough to finish off.

They haven’t had time to marshal another contingent of guards yet, but Sypha is under no illusions; they will. Meanwhile, the plate-mail clad vampires trickle out of the doors one by one and she swats at them like so many buzzing insects, changing spells as she does so, making certain her mind and her shoulders are loosened and ready for anything that comes next. She summons a flying boulder, spikes of ice to send through the open faces of their helmets, fire with wind behind it. Then she snaps her fingers, looking for that last, elusive power, and meets nothing. No lightning, then.

The last guard facing her dies to an ice blade in the face. Then only ominous silence.

She moves a little farther into the courtyard. She builds a protective wall of rubble in front of herself. She waits and plans. But as long minutes pass without a sound from the fortress, Sypha begins to worry. This will never do—she needs their attention here, on her, so Alucard can slip by in much closer quarters. Does this silence mean he’s been discovered? What, is she not interesting enough? She narrows her eyes at one tower after another, debating which she can bring down most easily. She’s willing to bet that large-scale structural damage to their fortress will bring them running.

But before she gets a chance to try, a shout rings out from the top of the battlements—some kind of order that she can’t make out. Another barked command. 

She sees the arrows flying at her only after they’ve been released.

An instant, solid wall of ice stops them. The archers fire another wave, and then another, but they can’t get to her. It’s a stalemate, which means Sypha is losing because she can’t afford to become boring to them. Hidden behind her wall, she lobs a wild swath of flame at them. Shouts let her know that she’s hit something. She lets loose again, but it’s hard to direct the fire and stay covered at the same time.  And then they stop. 

The main doors of the hold swing open. A man barks out an order. And, having been given the time to gather their forces, they all come for her at once.  

So many of them—they look like an actual wave bearing down on her head, inexorable, and for a moment the sight sends a cold shock through her, something that she tells herself is excitement and anger instead of fear. Anger, she can use. She thinks they will have to go over her pile of debris and the bodies of their comrades, and this at least will buy her time. But she’s forgotten what it means to fight an army of vampires, and it takes them mere moments to leap over the rubble.  They come at her in a solid wall, and now her trouble is real. She needs reinforcements, but all she has is herself.

Come on, Sypha. Time for something big.

She snaps her fingers and meets...nothing. Fire and ice come so easily, even the gusts of wind, but that won’t be enough now. She snaps again and again, frantically, like trying to strike a spark off flint…”Come on...come on…” The first vampire leaps at her.

In her panic, the charge catches between her fingers, but it’s sloppy, uncertain. She throws her hands up in reflexive protection and lightning shoots out. Arms extended, she sweeps a broad, jerky path, the power barely under her control, before she loses the spell. The back of her throat tastes tinny, like the air before a storm, and then the acrid odor of burnt meat seeps in long seconds before she realizes what it means. A dozen men die, their armor flash-melted on their bodies before those bodies crumble to dust. 

Then the lightning sputters out and she knows it’s not coming back. 

Until now the score has been greatly in her favor. Nobody has touched her yet; it looks like a complete victory. But Sypha knows that she doesn’t have the option for anything less. Outnumbered like this, the first time one of them lays hands on her she will die.

And then there is no more time for thought because she’s in the thick of it, catching opponents flying at her from every angle, using anything that comes out of her hands. She drops five of them on spinning blades of ice, but there are five more just as close, and when she impales one the other grabs her robes, twisting her around with a sword at her neck.

She burns his arm just before he can cut her throat, but they are piling on her now, exactly the way they had taken Trevor—blows meant to cause pain, not to kill. A kick to her side lands on her bandages, pain blossoming in already-bruised ribs. Another to her face and she sees stars. She sees the hand grasping for her hair before thought even returns and reacts on pure instinct, drawing her arms and legs in, forming a ball, exactly as she had when cornered by too many bullies in childhood. She’s minimizing the damage, admitting defeat, waiting for them to stop playing with her as a cat plays with its food and simply crush her, instead.

But this time she has power that she did not have back then. She takes all of the terror and pain of the moment and turns it into a vibrating mass, clutched between her heart and her hands. 

And then she explodes.

They fly out in every direction, tossed by a wind that even their super-strength can’t match. Sypha rolls to her feet. She’s out of breath, but she comes up swinging, and she’s found it—against all hope, she’s found that spark again.

Time to show them some new tricks.

Fire glows in one hand, lightning in the other, then they stretch, elongate, snake and curl beneath her grip, and Sypha snaps her arms straight down.

The two lashes, fire and lightning, go with her.

They’ll crack like whips and curl around ankles and wrists like whips, but she won’t need to use the motion of her body to make them change direction, like Trevor does. She bends them with her will. Still, Trevor has taught her a thing or two. She raises her arms over her head and surveys the soldiers before her.

Then she crosses her arms and the lashes dance.

It is hard work. All of this is hard work, the focus of her will that she’s honed over a lifetime and the constant motion of arms and shoulders and torso in a body that is not as strong as her enemies. Her shoulders ache, her neck aches. She hasn’t begun to slow down yet, but she can feel it—she will, soon.

But miraculously, bey all hope, they begin to slow as well. The flood of vampires racing towards her with swords and fangs bared turns into a stream, and then a trickle.

She hasn’t beaten them, hasn’t taken out anything like their full contingent. They’re planning another surge. Still, she’s glad for the break. She breathes deeply, steadily, surveying the mess she’s made of the courtyard.

Then from the lowest tower, a woman’s voice calls out—”On me!” 

Sypha looks up and takes her in at a glance—dark, wild-haired, bigger even than Trevor, and armored in a way that speaks of long years of expertise in killing. How long she’s been standing there, directing the battle, Sypha doesn’t know. She calls out—”Mark. Mark—”

Sypha’s hands blaze.

“—Charge!”

Then the next wave hits with a ferocity that she cannot match and the commander is rushing at her with a speed that feels like fate. She strikes out wildly with fire and catches some, but their leader is too quick and she flies up into the air—actually flies—and launches herself at Sypha.

Two can play at that game. Sypha clamps her arms straight against her sides and lights them up. Then she rockets up to meet the vampire general.

The last thing she sees is a gauntlet-clad fist flying towards her face.

...

Adrian stops in the shadow of the drainpipe, Trevor draped over his shoulder, to watch the scene that’s unfolding in the courtyard. The fighting has stopped for now—does that mean Sypha’s escaped? 

No. No, of course not. A wide circle of guards has formed around one small point, swords at the ready. They part as the tall one—Striga, or was she Morana?—stands before that point of quiet. Their focus, of course, is Sypha.

She is subdued, surrounded by so many guards that she must be their prisoner, and in that first moment that Adrian catches sight of her, being pulled to her feet by one of the guards, he worries that she too is dead or unconscious. But then she shakes herself and stands up straight, and at a glance she seems healthy enough. Trevor, on the other hand, is barely alive. And may not live the time it takes to get to the castle , a little voice tells him pragmatically. If you have to make a choice, perhaps it had better be Sypha.

No. No, no, he will not have to make a choice. Wait, he counsels himself. See what she does.

“Well.” Striga—he thinks it is Striga—backs up to get a good look at Sypha. The other one—that must be Morana—strides across the courtyard to her. The courtyard itself is a scene of unprecedented carnage, but Striga is not looking at Sypha as if she presents a threat. “And what should we do with this one, who has made all this trouble for the second time today? Wrecked a good part of our fortifications. Well, Little Speaker—” her eyes narrow. “We’ll take that out in your hide.” 

The guards raise their spears. Adrian prepares to prop Trevor in the drain and charge in, but Striga raises her hand. “No! We do not throw away a perfectly good magician. But—” she considers, “Perhaps we should keep her from doing any more damage. Cut off her hands. What do you think?” 

Sypha hasn’t responded, which isn’t like her, but she stands tall. What is she doing?

No human could see much of her from all the way across the courtyard, but Adrian can. Her eyes have gone blank, placid in a way that he doesn’t remember seeing before. As if she’s not there. As if her attention is somewhere else.

“Answer me,” Striga demands.

Sypha’s hands flutter at her side just a bit, like a scarf in a breeze.

“Insolent child, you will answer me or I will take your tongue as well as your hands!” 

“Go now!” Sypha shouts. Striga looks furious, but Alucard supposes she’d meant it for him. She wants him to leave her, to get Trevor to safety. Far across the moonlit yard, the breeze lifts her hair, up, up, away from her face.

“What is she doing?” Morana asks.

A cracking sound breaks the silence behind them. Both women and half the guards turn reflexively to look at nothing, at a moonlit night.

The sound comes again, and then a noise like the stone of the castle itself has shifted and given a great sigh. It isn’t the first time today Adrian has heard a sound like that. Then a thousand little popping sounds, like black powder on bonfire night.

The vampires realize what’s happening before he does. “Stop her hands, you idiots, stop her hands !” Striga shouts. Then she lunges at Sypha. 

Creeeeeeeak comes a sound like metal being torn apart. Sypha raises her arms and pulls.

Only later will he put together how it happened. Behind the fortress lies a dam, the water of a small mountain lake held back from the plateau where the fortress is built. Under Sypha’s touch, sharp points of icicles have squeezed needle-thin between every brick and then expanded at her will. Then, with a sigh like the gust of wind that sweeps the courtyard, she melts them.

Bricks crumble. Water breaks through the middle first, pouring like an avalanche. Alucard has time to see Striga change direction and dive for Morana instead, time to see Sypha lift off into the sky as the guards are swept away, before he realizes that he and Trevor are standing in a storm drain. 

Chapter Text

Adrian’s tumbling down a cliff, bowled over by the force of the flood, water in his eyes and up his nose and in the back of his throat, and when he comes up for a breath he can only cough. Trevor doesn’t even manage that, but Adrian keeps him carefully atop his own body, away from the scraping rocks. Hopefully he’s kept his head out of the water, too.

Then he shoots off a low overhang, getting a blissfully deep breath on the way down. He lands in a deeper part of the ravine and he’s sinking, straight down into water as thick as sludge. His eyes sting. He can’t see a thing.

Vampires and running water. He can’t swim.

It’s not that he doesn’t know how to swim. He can’t .

Sinking like a stone, Adrian tries to kick towards the surface. Water swirls past him and then it’s muck as he settles at the bottom, stuck up to his knees in slime, Trevor a precariously floating form atop him. Something in the riverbed tangles his legs and he thrashes in a panic. He can’t take a breath. He can’t take a breath or he’ll drown.

And then, like a creature out of all nightmares, something brushes his shoulder. It touches him like those things on his legs… only those are just plants, aren’t they? It’s nothing. A fish. A plant.

The water swirls against his face. Something’s moving it, coming towards him. The whatever-it-is brushes by him again, and as it touches his cheek he feels it shift and twist towards him in recognition. Alive. It’s alive and aware, and hunting him. He opens his mouth to scream, and his eyes open instinctively as well. And as the last of his air bubbles uselessly from his lungs the murk clears for a moment, enough for him to see some land creature shoving at him with clawed and muscled arms. It’s not attacking him. It’s tugging at the burden on his shoulder. Its target is Trevor.

Adrian reacts instinctively, reaching out with talons to slash at the creature’s head. At the same time, he sucks in a badly needed breath. But it’s not air, it’s water, shit-tasting water that fills his mouth and lungs.

He does the fastest, most instinctive mental calculation he’s ever done while drowning. Trevor floats, but he cannot breathe unconscious and face-down in water. Keep him here and he dies. Let him go to the creature, who can’t eat underwater, and he lives for another few minutes. 

Adrian lets go.

Meeting no resistance where he expects a fight, the creature vaults off, dragging Trevor along with him. Barely able to register the change, Adrian kicks desperately towards the surface, panicking and thrashing blindly but still drawing the water aside with his arms as he’s seen humans do.

He might as well be an anvil at the bottom of the sea, for all the good it does him.

His lungs are full. His nose stings. He can’t even cough, can only take great, destructive gulps.

He’s drowning.

Perhaps it’s his imagination—all he can see now are red spots, all he can hear is the staccato of his heartbeat in his own ears—but as he flails at the water, it begins to push back. First he can tell only because it wraps his hair across his face, but soon the water is swirling around him in earnest, brushing his arms and whipping his hair in a current, and then a whirlpool, hungry and reaching for him.

But then the water sweeps away from him altogether, leaving him in a dry spot in the middle of a pond of sewer runoff with walls of water spinning so dramatically around it that he might as well be the Hebrews in the middle of the Red Sea.

He gasps for air, finds that he’s still drowning, and retches painfully, doubled over in the mud. His nose stings and his chest aches, and it’s long moments before he can breathe again, shuddering gasps on his hands and knees in the mud.

Sypha is at his side, hand held out, keeping the water at bay. She gestures, and a path opens between him and the opposite shore. “What are you waiting for?” she asks. “Get moving!”

He’s coughing and heaving still as he reaches the opposite shore, but surely Alucard, son of Dracula, can locate and take down one night creature, even in this state.

It hasn’t gone far; there it is on the opposite shore, leaning over something that can only be Trevor. Adrian recognizes the hunched, inhuman shoulders and the muscled back and knows instantly that the creature is a lycanthrope, even if its movement is a bit off, a bit slow. He can’t smell blood yet. Perhaps Trevor doesn’t have enough blood left to detect, or perhaps the creature is just confused; unlike their full-blooded relatives, werewolves aren’t fond of eating already-dead prey. But this also means that it hasn’t attacked yet. It’s not too late. “Come on!” he calls to Sypha. Then he puts on a burst of speed so extreme that he blurs out of sight. 

A wall of ice springs up between Adrian and his target and he slams into it face-first.“No!” Sypha shouts.

“He has Belmont,” Adrian tells her. Surely she can see, surely she knows that time is of the essence, surely even a werewolf-ravaged Trevor is better to her than a dead one.

She lands atop her own wall and it melts abruptly, setting her down between Alucard and the monster. “Back, Zev,” she says.

Who in Satan’s bestiary is Zev?

The lycanthrope lopes towards her. Every instinct screams to him that she’s about to be ravaged. But Sypha has made her instructions clear, so he bites back the urge to attack and watches... as the thing throws itself at Sypha and fawns at her feet. 

She pets its head. “Good boy. Go on, now. Go and find him.” 

It takes two steps away, then turns to look back at her with a question in its face. For a moment the glow of the moon catches its eyes at just the right angle and they flash a cold light. “Go,” she tells it firmly, and they watch as it does indeed begin to trot off.  Then she looks up at Adrian. “I think we have no time to waste.”

He picks up Trevor, realizing: “That night creature—the one that begged for his life…”

“Well, we could hardly double-cross him,” Sypha says, motioning him to hurry. “And we couldn’t leave him to ravage the good people of Braila, either. So,” she cheers briefly, “he became our prisoner.”

“Pet,” Adrian corrects.

She shakes her head. “He is looking for his own master, and we were, as well; otherwise, I think he would have eaten us. He is not a real werewolf, you know, but a made creature. And now,” she shrugs, “A dog is a dog, apparently.” She pointedly does not look at Trevor, doesn’t stop to examine him or even ask if he’s alive. Here, on an open hillside, is not the time for grief. “Hurry,” she says again. 

…

They cannot hurry their approach to Dracula’s castle, though. When they get close they are forced to sneak, Adrian listening for every snap of a twig, every rustle that is not a tree branch. The snow blankets the land in quiet; he hears nothing. “Perhaps your flood slowed them,” he suggests, knowing better than to hope. Vampires can’t drown, but they can’t escape from the water any more than he could, and enough of a flood will, in fact, kill them. If they’d been trapped in the fortress itself, not washed towards their destination…

Sypha shrugs.

“Ambush inside?” he murmurs.

“Did you invite any of them in?”

“That’s a superstition.”

“I warded it before we left; you watched me. We should be all right if we can make it to the door.” It won’t take the remaining soldiers long to rally, though; time is still not on their side. After only moments of waiting and watching, Adrian makes a mad dash for it, Sypha following more slowly, ready to provide him cover. But for once, for the only time in this entire stupid escapade, their luck holds.

Sypha shuts the door behind them in a dramatic burst of wind, then struggles with the bar. “Put him down. Right there. Is he breathing?”

“He is breathing.” Adrian doesn’t tell her that Trevor’s breath is so shallow, his heartbeat so faint, that he might not have been able to detect them without heightened senses. Instead he lowers his burden to the floor, being careful not to let Trevor’s head knock. No reason to go through the trouble of saving him if he isn’t going to regain consciousness.

Sypha inserts herself between the two of them, having given up on the door in her haste. “Bar it, please?” she asks, taking off the remains of Trevor’s vest, then his shirt, then boots, unbuttoning and ripping as she goes, working with remarkable speed.

When he returns from the task, she is conducting a swift and increasingly despairing examination. “He is barely breathing. I can’t even hear his heart, though it must be beating. Look!” She holds up Trevor’s hand, which is tinged blue. As are his toes, his lips. He has contusions and cuts enough to make Sypha’s injuries look like a skinned knee, though Adrian can’t yet tell about internal bleeding. “And look!” Sypha’s voice is either accusing or despairing; he can’t tell which. She points to Trevor’s neck, and then the insides of his arms, where ring-shaped bruises tell a clear story.

“They’ve fed from him.”

“Do you think they have—”

“Turned him into a vampire?” Adrian supplies, tone as confident as he can make it. “Certainly not. For one thing, his heart still beats, so he hasn’t died. For another, if he’d fed on vampire blood he wouldn’t be in such a piss-poor condition right now.”

Sypha doesn’t even bother to look up. “So he...he will heal himself?” She sounds doubtful. She sounds dangerously near tears.

“No.”

Now she looks at him.

“Sypha, I am so sorry.”

“No.”

“When a victim has lost this much blood, he will die.”

“NO!”

“He is in shock.”

“Put some back, then! I know you can do it; I’ve seen the equipment. Take mine.”

Alucard shakes his head at her. “No. The blood of two people can be...incompatible. It could kill him.”

She’s been trying to crawl beneath Trevor or prop him up against her, to wrap her cloak around him and hold his body to hers. Her voice has gone shrill. “What do we have to lose?!”

“He might be saved…” Alucard tells her, trying very hard for gentle, “with a great deal of blood. More than you can afford to give. Or he might not. I doubt his body can rally. At this point the only sure way to save him is vampire blood.”

“No.” She’s firm, but the word sounds like a sob. “He’d rather die.” 

“Oh, I see.” Adrian puts on his best snooty tone, but Sypha doesn’t catch it.

“If my blood might save him, and a vampire’s will…” And now she’s connected the dots. He’d wondered if she would, but of course she’s not stupid. “Alucard, what will your blood do?”

He says nothing.

“Could you save him?”

He closes his eyes, wanting to give it, lonely and angry because now they are literally bleeding him dry and he can’t even blame them for it. It’s not their fault. They never mean harm, do they, when they ask him to cut out a piece of himself and offer it to the world on a platter? 

“Please. Alucard, please .” 

He bends and lifts Trevor again. His weight seems lighter now, was not much of a burden to begin with, but Adrian is tired, so tired, despite being physically the healthiest member of their company. His pain will have to wait a little longer. Again. “He can’t drink in this state. I can place the needle, but you will have to make certain it stays in his vein after that.”

She moans, a relieved little sound, as she follows him towards his mother’s laboratory.

“Don’t hope for a miracle.” 

“How much blood will he need?” she asks, belatedly. “Can you spare it?”

“I just fed,” he reminds her.

“That does not answer my question.”

“If he takes too much, I will find more.”

“Take mine if you need.”

“Enough, Sypha. You’ve asked this of me, now let me do it.”  

He sterilizes the tubing and needles—finer and more comfortable than vampire teeth—while Sypha dries their clothes with a warm wind, the best part of his entire day, and washes Trevor’s arm. Then he finds that his hands are clean and he needs to roll up his sleeve.

“Here, let me.”

She takes him by the cuff before he can object and rolls it with the same panicked efficiency she’d used on Trevor’s clothes. Two folds in, she stops dead. “Alucard, what is this?”

What is it? What does she—? No. No, she can’t see that, he won’t let her, she can’t . Ugly scars, healed now, rope around his arm, the palpable signs of everything that’s gone rotten in him. How could he have let her get close enough to see those? 

Before he can pull back she pushes his sleeve up past the elbow, eyes widening. “What happened to you?”

“Stop.” He shoves her hands away, ruining the sterility of his own, before he can think. Then Sypha is looking at him with big, frightened eyes from across the room.

How did she get all the way over there? 

He pushed her. He must have pushed her. 

They stare at each other for a long moment, miserable. Then Sypha picks up the jar with the sulfur mixture and brings it to him. “Here. We’ll wash again.”

They don’t talk about it anymore. Adrian places the needle in Trevor’s arm before doing his own. Sypha bandages Trevor to keep the tubing in place, then gets Adrian a chair, and then he sits and watches the tube, feeling nothing, feeling a little cold, imagining the sensation of blood leaving his body. He doesn’t let himself look at Trevor because he’s got to make certain that the blood is flowing without hindrance, doesn’t he? He doesn’t look up again at all until Sypha makes another of those unbearable little grieving sounds.  

The change is dramatic. First, Trevor’s skin flushes, color radiating outwards from his arm like red dye dropped in water. As the blue tinge leaves his skin the bruising goes as well, shrinking in towards the site of injury before finally disappearing altogether. He draws a breath, a great, whooshing inhalation, and then another, and after several strained gasps (his heart grows louder with each one), he is breathing easily, heartbeat steady, and Adrian pinches the tube before removing it from his own arm.

Then Trevor opens his eyes and looks at Sypha. “You were supposed to run away,” he chastises.

She bursts into tears, dropping her face to his chest.

Adrian can’t see Trevor’s face, but he sees the arm that wraps around Sypha, stroking down her hair and back, and he feels distinctly like a voyeur. “Shh,” Trevor soothes. “It’s all right. I’m all right now. Shh, Sypha, I’m right here.”

A fist thumps his shoulder and Sypha scolds without looking up, “You scared me half to death!”

“I know. I know. But you got me out. I don’t know how, but you did it.”

She leans to the side and Trevor raises himself on his elbow. Trained as a hunter, he makes a sweep of his surroundings first, before his eyes settle on Adrian and...light up. “Bloody vampire Jesus,” he says. “So that’s how you did it.”  

Sypha turns around, nose red and tears drying, and she’s smiling at him too, with that bright look like she’s personally responsible for his triumphs. Adrian’s heart thumps painfully in his chest, his stomach sick with pleasure and embarrassment and jealousy. “I was merely the errand boy,” he says. “Sypha did all of the heavy fighting.”

“Don’t listen to him; he almost drowned for you.” She wipes her nose on her sleeve before turning on Adrian. “And you —”

“What did I do?”

“You saved the day; that is what. Stop deprecating and downplaying and pulling away!” She tosses a hand up in exasperation, but then softens. “Please.”

He nods once.

“Now,” says Sypha, recovering rapidly from her earlier despair, “Are you all right, or should we be looking for blood?”

Trevor shakes his head like a dog with water in its fur, trying to shake out the cobwebs. “Why would we need blood? How the hell did we get back to the castle? What’s wrong with Alucard?”

Adrian tries not to blanch at how easily she speaks of feeding. “I’m all right.”

“And how am I not dead? Nobody heals this fast except—”

“We fed you vampire blood,” Sypha tells him matter-of-factly. She’s perked up noticeably; she seems unconcerned, but Adrian knows she’s really waiting for a reaction. 

Which she gets, spectacularly. Trevor sits up so quickly he looks like something stung him, chokes on his own spit, and ends up coughing, Sypha pounding him comfortingly on the back. “You did what? You did not!”

Eyes innocent, she taps the needle still firmly planted in his arm.

“Oh. Oh, I see.” Trevor frowns. “I was about to say that nobody heals this quickly except Alucard, and Sypha Belnades, I already know that you are a troll. So?” He raises his eyebrows, looking at Adrian.

Adrian refuses to meet his eyes, trying for aloof. It is still vampire blood in some sense, and this is the last son of the house of Belmont… “Guilty as charged.”

Trevor lunges at him—worse than he expected—but the next thing he knows his forearm is firmly grasped in Trevor’s own and they’re locked in an awkward dance that maybe started out as an embrace but turned into an intense handshake when Adrian stupidly jumped back at the outset.

Sypha saves them by making it worse. “Now you are blood brothers,” she pronounces in satisfaction. “And you have to pinky swear to be friends forever.”

Adrian groans. Trevor rolls his eyes. They drop hands. “We get mowed down by an army and she thinks it’s a nursery school outing.”  

“She’s awful.” 

“Now.” Sypha sidles onto the examination bench, wriggling between them, and takes one of their hands in each of hers. Again, Adrian gets the head-swimming sensation that the last few months haven’t happened, that they never left. “I think we need to get out of here quickly.”

Trevor huffs in frustration. “Why would we need to leave the castle? And would somebody please tell me how we got here? How long was I out?”

“A few hours.”

“We are still in Styria. Sypha brought the castle to you. And me as well.”

“I thought she broke it.”

“It’s still broken. She just magicked it here.”

“So we’re still very much in enemy territory.”

“And that’s why we need to leave,” Sypha breaks in. “I think the easiest way is to move the castle back. We’ll be a month’s journey away before they know it.”

“All right,” Alucard agrees, as Trevor says, “Can you do that?”

“Ye-es…” Sypha hedges, something in her tone that makes the both of them suspicious.

“Yes but what?” Trevor asks her flatly.

“I can move the castle. It is no problem.”

“Sypha…”

“Only—” she glances cagily to the side, “I can’t move it from inside of it.”

They stare at her in flat silence for long moments before Trevor says, “All right, so we leave the castle here and we run.”

“I doubt that we’ll make it.” Adrian frowns, trying to think his way out of this new conundrum. “It might be better to stay here and make a stand.”

“Or—” Sypha’s still using that too-bright tone, the one that means she’s about to try to sell them a plan they won’t like.

“Or what?”

“Your father...he had a locating mirror, did he not?”

“Yes.”

“But it is not merely for seeing. It is one that people can pass through.”

He grits his teeth. “Yes.”

“Then you can pull me back after you.”

“I cannot. It’s been broken for years.”

“And yet he used it. You told me he did.”

“He knows the cipher to reassemble the pieces.”

“And you do not.”

“It’s not that—”

“Well, if it’s not that, then the plan will work. I move the castle. And then you pull me back after you.”

“No,” Trevor says.

That sinking, fluttering feeling creeps into Adrian’s chest again, things moving too quickly and out of his control, people demanding what he cannot give without disaster. “I can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“Because we’re sure as fuck not leaving you here alone!” Trevor is shouting now, on his feet, towering over her.

Sypha crosses her arms and squares up. “It is the best plan.”

“Sypha, listen to me.” Adrian talks fast, but he can’t shake the sense that no matter what he says she won’t hear it. “I have known how to operate the mirror for years in theory, but I have never once managed to activate it successfully.”

“And when was the last time you tried?”

“I was fourteen,” he admits.

She waves her hand dismissively.

“This is not some adventure,” Trevor roars. “You are going to get yourself killed!”

But now Sypha is out of patience with being shouted at, and her expression goes cold. “Look,” she says, abruptly businesslike. “We left the wagon in Buda and I doubt the new horses are still alive. You are terrible at hiding. If we run, we will be overtaken. If we stay here, we may be able to hold out, but an indefinite siege without a plan for ending it will not go in our favor. If we lose, they will gain whatever secrets Dracula’s castle holds.”

“You should have thought of that before you pulled the entire castle here,” Adrian says, his only concession to the fear and frustration that won’t stop beating at him.

“I tried!” Sypha bursts out, despairing. “I tried to pull you alone, Alucard, only I couldn’t see you! I don’t know why, but I couldn’t see you!” She takes a breath and gets control of herself. “Anyway, we needed a stronghold of our own.”  Nobody says anything. “This is the best way,” she tries again. “The other ways get us killed.” When she still meets silence she says, with false cheerfulness, “Alucard can manage the mirror.”

“You do not know that.”

Trevor crosses his arms and stands in glowering silence, which means that he’s giving in, Adrian thinks.

“And if we cannot pull you back immediately?”

“I have my magic. And I can hide.” Another unhappy silence. “I am not stupid or reckless!”

Trevor’s brows are so furrowed that his face looks as if it is making its own shadows. “We wait until morning,” he decides. “We’re not setting you out in the snow right now. Even if they besiege us, we can hold out until morning.” 

“They have humans in their employ, too,” Adrian warns, but Trevor shakes his head.

“I think they have a few humans living in the castle, but I didn’t see any human soldiers. Did you, Sypha?”

“No. But their kingdom is vast.” She shrugs.

“At any rate, I think you can handle the humans.” 

Sypha beams at them with the smile of somebody who has won an argument. “Morning it is, then. And in the meantime we can take a look at that mirror.”

“And eat,” Trevor insists.

“Oh, yes.”

“And drink.”

“Oh, no.”

…

Sypha had envisioned the nicest dinner, fire roaring against the dark and all three of them at the kitchen table in the only cozy room of Dracula’s entire castle, teasing and laughing like old times. As soon as they’ve barred the doors and windows, though, Alucard leads them to his father’s study and the spinning pieces of liquid glass that will mean the difference between her survival and loss, and he begins to work.

“Come and look at this,” he invites.

“I may starve first.”

“You two intellectuals work.” Trevor shoos them towards the mirror. “I’ll go find some food.”

Sypha and Alucard turn towards him at exactly the same time, with identical urgency. “No.” Sypha’s gaze flicks towards Alucard, wondering if he feels the same stab of panic at the thought of being separated again, but he won’t meet her eyes.

Trevor blinks twice before he seems to get the picture, then he holds his hands up appeasingly. “All right, all right.” 

“Alucard,” Sypha appeals. “You will fix the mirror, I know you will. And you may have eaten, but we have not.” 

“And Sypha gets feral when you don’t feed her every two hours,” Trevor adds. “Like a minotaur.”

“I do not!” Sypha says hotly, knowing her words for a lie.

Still, dinner is a hurried affair of leftover bread and soup which she flash-heats for them, leaving it cold in the middle and hot enough to burn your tongue around the edges. (“Stir, idiot!” she admonishes Trevor.) And then they are back to the mirror, which Sypha examines for a solid half-hour without even finding any glyphs, while Alucard studies its depths as if steeling himself for something.

Finally his hands begin to work, just a few tentative strokes in the air, as if he’s caressing a skittish cat and not yet sure what will happen. At first nothing does happen, but then his fingers warm up, or the mirror itself does. The tips of his fingers begin to gleam as he works, his hands leaving behind tracers like the after-glow of a candle against closed eyelids. Sypha squints, peering at them, trying to find a pattern.

The shards stir and dance and melt into a pool. Sypha’s trying like mad to catch the shapes before they can fade; it’s something...something she doesn’t know, but something familiar all the same… “Oh!” she says in realization.

At the same time, Trevor takes a quick step forward and her eyes go to Alucard’s face, for the first time noticing the pressed mouth, the lines of tension, the hair plastered with sweat to the sides of his head.

He lets his breath out in a gasp and Trevor takes another step, waiting for him to stagger and need support, though neither he nor Alucard would dare to admit that. Sypha finishes her thought— “It’s the old lich language.”

Alucard turns his back to Trevor, the refusal clear.

“That is why nobody but your father could operate it. Anyone who tries must be a powerful vampire and must know the language and the magic, as well.”

“I am not a powerful vampire,” Alucard says, voice rougher than she remembers hearing it.

“Are you all right? It is a great act of concentration.”

“Fine.” 

“Alucard,” she says for the hundredth time today, and he looks up at her sharply, his eyes asking what now. She hadn’t expected him to be angry with her… “Do you need to eat more?” she asks again. “Or...eat?”

“No.”

“So stop being the saddest vampire prince of all time and tell us what you do need,” Trevor prods.

Alucard raises one fine eyebrow. “To get the portal in operation?”

“No, you moron. Well, yes, but no— Is it ever possible for you to just give us a straight answer without sticking your nose in the air?”

Sypha opens her mouth to chastise him, but before she can speak, Alucard turns to Trevor and...smiles. He genuinely smiles. “No,” he says.

Trevor growls in his throat, low and frustrated.

Sypha, for her part, all but melts in relief. She’s missed this kind of arguing, where she is the audience and nobody is shouting at her. So she decides to poke them. “Alucard, be kind. Perhaps you could give him a lesson. After all, Trevor is part vampire now.” She sits up and puts her hands on her knees pertly, waiting.

Both shoot her the most delightful death-stare, those good boys. Should she worry that they always play to the script?

“Sypha.” Alucard turns back to the mirror. “You know very well Trevor can’t read.”

“Magic, you fangy snob! I can’t read magic!”

The argument spirals into its predictable pattern. After so many months, Sypha watches with new interest. What are they doing, still behaving this way? Either would die for the other, today has proven that again. And yet ask them to say something nice, or even hold back an insult, and you would think they were being asked to bare their throats to a mortal blow. Heaven forbid they simply stop tearing pieces out of each other. 

And yet, and yet… Alucard remains cold, aloof, above, but has she heard him speak so many words in the rest of the day combined? When they argue, the distance between them shrinks, and she can’t help but feel that Alucard’s apathy is only an act, where a moment before it had been real, a great gulf between him and the rest of the world.

“I missed you,” Sypha says, partially to see what will happen when Alucard meets sweetness instead of the direct argument he expects, partially because she did, she realizes. Absurdly, his bickering with Trevor is the white noise that puts her mind at ease, two deep voices, the rise and fall of their endless dance endlessly predictable. “We missed you.”

Trevor hmphs, but he doesn’t object. She suspects he’s trying to hit the right note, exactly between dissent and agreement, that Alucard can interpret as he pleases. Show no vulnerability, but inflict no wounds, either. Certainly not that; he’s growing into the type of man who could never inflict wounds on either of them. And he’s smiling underneath the huff, the corner of his mouth twitching into a pleased little thing that he can’t quite keep at bay.

Alucard studies her for an uncomfortably long time, his eyes speaking of a deep, settled, and endless sadness—she sees it so clearly, now that they’re not fighting. She supposes he’s always been sad, as long as she’s known him, but this— well, tonight it strikes at her heart.

Finally, he says quietly, “Your absence was felt.” The words seem cold, deliberately noncommittal, but they drop gently from his mouth with a significance she can’t explain, like something broken and true. 

...

Alucard works. Trevor rummages and puts together a sack of supplies. Sypha expects to fall asleep, exhausted and bruised, watching magic that she cannot hope to understand, but though her eyes go grainy with fatigue and her bones feel like they’re grinding against each other, she never manages to drift off.

Finally, in the small hours before dawn when she’s forgotten the danger, almost forgotten where they are, a fizzing sound and a bright light wake her from her daze-not-sleep. She bolts upright. Across the room, Trevor stirs and sucks in a breath.

He has it. Alucard has it. The pieces congeal, they melt, they shimmer into being. “Show me the Belmont Hold,” he says. A moment later he passes his arm through, in and out a few times like a trick magician proving there is no deception in his art.

Sypha stays quiet for as long as she can, until she’s certain that the mirror is working, then she shrieks in delight. “You’ve got it! You did it!”

Alucard lets out a breath, a ragged gasp.

“I knew you could do it!” she says.

Then he staggers backwards and falls.

...

Not hurt, not hurt, she tells herself, once they’ve established that he is not badly injured, that in fact he never even lost consciousness. Not hurt, only tired.

Not tired either, though. He is pale to the point of sickness, far past his usual pallor. He looks…

Drained, she realizes suddenly with a sharp stab of guilt made more intense by her failure to realize it before. He looks drained. 

Trevor orders them to sleep, his usual pragmatic self. She and Alucard share a look that means they will never tell Trevor how poor a job they’d done planning without him. They all bunk down on the couches in one of the libraries, an absurd choice given the number of beds in the castle, but none can stand to be relegated to a room alone. And Sypha, who should be exhausted beyond the ability to keep her eyes open, stares at the ceiling and listens to the tattoo of both men’s breathing until the dawn comes. 

...

“This is still the stupidest idea you’ve ever had.”

“No, it’s not,” Sypha tells him, all innocence.

“Stupidest,” Trevor insists. “And I’ve seen you set flying goat turds on fire.” He frowns at her, petulant, because the grumpiness keeps panic at bay and lets him think strategically, and they’re going to need him at his best.

“Ready?” he asks Alucard.

His friend nods slightly. “Once we get inside,” he tells Sypha, “Don’t wait.”

“I won’t.” 

Trevor hands Sypha the bag he’s packed, then wraps his arms around her and hugs her so completely that her face disappears into his chest. She rests her forehead there, in the center of his chest, and he can feel her breathing through his shirt—first the warm exhale and then the cool spot it leaves behind. She doesn’t even reach his shoulder. “Don’t be an idiot,” he murmurs into her hair.

“I won’t,” she promises, muffled.

“If we can’t pull you back right away, get as far as you can before nightfall—carefully—and then hide.”

“Yes, Father,” she says, peeking up at him with a naughty glint in her eye. 

Trevor raises his eyebrow in that way she secretly likes, just to watch her face go pink. “Listen to what I say or I’ll lock you in your room.”

“Promise?”

He kisses the top of her head, then lets her go.

Alucard repeats Trevor’s speech almost exactly, though without an ounce of playfulness, which is frankly a loss. “I don’t know how long this will take. Can you get somewhere safe?” 

Having won, Sypha reverts to an unnatural obedience. “Yes.”

“Perhaps I should start the mirror before you send us away.”

“Alucard.” Sypha cuts off his fretting by throwing her arms around the dhampir’s neck. “Just go.” 

Trevor watches, something strange and fond and melancholy in his chest that tells him not to leave, not to change this. “We can run,” he offers again. “Leave the castle here and just run.”

“No.” Sypha takes a deliberate step back from the both of them, withdraws the gold-handled locating mirror from one of the endless pockets in her robe, and shoos them. 

Just before they shut the door, she looks right at Alucard and says, “I trust you.”

I’m trusting you. The words echo uncomfortably in Trevor’s head. What do they remind him of?

…

They land right back where they started, at the Belmont hold, Sypha’s aim so precise that the castle doesn’t even make a dent in the grass. Trevor looks out the door to check. 

“She must have used a reversal spell,” Alucard muses, as if anyone is interested in magical theory right now. “Simpler. Smart.”

“Mirror.”

“Right.”

Wrong.

Trevor catches a whiff of something foul, his brain processing the feeling before it can place the scent. Something is wrong. “Wait.” Something else is here, some danger that he can’t see, can only smell. He recognizes it from years of the hunt—the stench of arriving too late. “What is that?”

“Belmont, we do not have time for this.”

“I know, but hear me out—something is off here. Surely you can smell it. Something is w—” He stops mid-word, spotting the source of decay. Two corpses, skeletons new enough that they haven’t yet bleached, sag on the pikes at either side of the castle door. Like scarecrows. They are past all danger themselves, but a horrified shock moves up his spine and settles in his stomach, all the same. Death waits for them here, arranged artfully at their front door, where he had expected safety. His hand goes to Morning Star for reassurance, but he finds nothing at his belt. 

Alucard looks sick, too, but not surprised.

“What—” Trevor asks him, “What the fuck are those?”