Last summer I went on holiday to New York with my folks and I just instantly fell in love with the city, so I decided to write an Anna/Drac story with the two of them somehow stranded in modern day NY.
Plus I've also been reading up on Ancient Egypt a lot recently so you'll probably find a fair few references dotted around my fic.
I'm still updating Midnight Falling so don't worry I haven't abandoned it, I just wanted to add more work onto my plate lol.
Also a big shout out to any NY readers!
Chapter 1 The Artefact
Hidden deep amongst the many chambers of the underground vaults within Vatican city lay an artefact believed to be dated from around the time of the ancient Egyptians.
A time of Pharaohs, the Valley of the Kings, 'Horus son of Osiris', the sky goddess 'Nut', star-shafts in pyramids aligned to observe Orion and Sirius forever and an incredible culture and belief that still mystifies as well as intrigues scientists, historians and educators to this day. It certainly mystified the monks that looked after and guarded the vaults.
No one knew what the purpose of the small metallic star-shaped object was, what it did…(if it did anything…it could have just been a rather decorative ornament for some noble Egyptian woman) or who made it, just that it had an engraving of what appeared to be a god and goddess locked together in a tight embrace.*
Many scholars were drafted in from all over Europe to try and solve the mystery of 'the fallen star' as it was affectionately named by French scientist Jean Bauval, but to no avail, no one could figure out its purpose or reason for being. So the head cardinals of the Vatican council all agreed that the artefact was nothing more than a highly decorated ornament that held no great use to the church or even science and that it was just another piece of history that would be confined to a shelf in the underground vaults until a place at Musei Vaticani (Vatican Museum) in Rome could be found for it.
And so the fallen star remained in the underground vaults gathering dust, its true power lying dormant, forgotten about for over thirty years.
…….Until now.
'You know Van Helsing when I gave you that enhanced crossbow I hadn't expected you to use it to beat someone over the head with it' remarked an annoyed Carl observing the now thoroughly trashed crossbow. Shaking his head at Van Helsing. They were standing in Carl's workshop that evening, Van Helsing had just returned from another low-key mission in France and was standing with his hands on his hips listening to his friend rant on about the now defunct weapon, his eyes rolling now and again as the young priest rabitted on in disbelief.
'A fine piece of design ingenuity, the most advanced and accurate of the bow weapons in our arsenal, can hit a target with a grouping of thirty millimetres at a distance of one hundred yards…and you use it to twat some guy over the head?'
Carl looked up towards Van Helsing.
'Well if you had given me enough arrows I wouldn't have had to use it as a club' van helsing answered back trying to hold back a chuckle, clearly amused at his friends annoyance. 'If you were a better shot you wouldn't have needed all twenty arrows for just one guy' remarked Carl before dumping the remains of the crossbow onto the nearest table.
Van Helsing once again rolled his eyes and shook his head at Carl, he knew Carl was a great inventor and it wouldn't be long before he got over it and had another weapon for Van Helsing to try out. Carl began sifting through the remains of the bow to see what he could salvage and re-use whilst Van Helsing began idly wandering around his workshop looking at the new creations and knick knacks Carl had come up with, there was nothing really new this month most of the things he'd already seen but something caught his eye on one of the shelf's on the faraway wall. Walking over he noticed the incredible craftsmanship of the design, it appeared to be a paper weight in the shape of a five-point star. He picked it up and turned it around in his hands getting a good look at it, running his fingers over the intricate engraving in the middle of it, 'hey Carl what's this you've got here?'. Carl turned to see what Van Helsing was talking about, 'Ah, I found that in one of the vaults last week' Carl put the bow down and walked over to Van Helsing. 'Incredible isn't it?'
'So what does it do?' .
'Um well…you see…its…' Van Helsing looked on amused at Carl's squirming. 'I haven't got a clue'.
Van Helsing handed Carl the star chuckling 'An incredibly designed…paper weight, what do you need it for?' he remarked as he looked around the pig sty that was Carls workshop, littered with weapons, tools, papers everywhere and a photograph…it was the young woman Carl had saved from the vampire brides back in the little Romanian village. 'I was thinking of giving it to her as a gift…do you think she'd like it?' asked Carl sadly. He had often noticed Carl looking at the image dreamily, he was obviously missing the girl and it had been a while since they visited Anna and the villagers…
'How about we take some time off and go visit?' he said nodding to the picture, Carl looked up excitedly 'really? Are you serious?'
It had been a while since Van Helsing had seen his friend this excited, 'sure why not, I'd like to see Anna again as well, I did say we'd go back to visit them so how about we leave tomorrow?'
The smile on Carls face was all the answer Van Helsing needed, truth be told he had wanted an excuse to visit Anna for a long time and this would be a perfect break from work for both of them as well.
The next day Van Helsing and Carl left Rome to make the incredible journey to Romania, Van Helsing looked forward to seeing Anna again and secretly hoped that she would finally declare her feelings for him…feelings he had for her but never mentioned. Carl had his picture with him and would often during breaks in the journey pull it out of his bag to gaze at it tenderly before putting it away and carrying on.
Also packed inside Carls bag was the fallen star, his gift to the woman he had fallen in love with, he hoped she would like it, they had promised to write to each other every week, a tradition Carl kept to with the utmost importance.
By the time they had reached the Romanian border it was dark and both were to tired to finish the journey on horseback (to the delight of the horses!) so they decided to bed down in the first tavern they came across so they were fresh to finish the journey tomorrow.
Tomorrow they would reach Transylvania.
To be continued
Authors note
1)In the story both Dracula and Anna survived (should have mentioned this at the start ;).
2)*The engraving on the star is based on The Heliopolitan creation myth- The sky-goddess 'Nut' and the earth-god 'Geb' locked in a tight embrace. If anyone's interested in the myth I'd be happy to explain
If you like please review!