(This story is set in the Castlevania setting belonging to Konami. I have no rights to this setting whatsoever, and this story is purely written for fun.)
The Vampire Killer
Janice arrived at the Belmont mansion a little after five in the afternoon. Nervously the young girl look up at the stately manor house. Was these pepole truly her relatives? God they had to be loaded to afford a place like this. Janice picks up her backpack, pays the cab driver and heads toward the doors to the manor, the doors to her own past.
Janice was an orphan, a dark haired, frightened young woman had delivered her on the door streps of Our Lady of Hope orphanage in Sibiu, Romania. Or so Janice was told. She had been very lucky and had been saved from the poverty of a small Romanian orphanage by a kindly American couple. The Clarks had adopted her and given Janice a good home, and a good education. Janice loved her adoptive parents, but as she grew older Janice had begun to wonder about who her real mother was, why had she abandoned her, did he perhaps have any brothers and sisters out there? The questions just kept coming and eventually Janice found the courage to begin searching for her roots.
The young girl's search had ended her. Janice had found and elderly woman that claimed to be her grandmother, and she had been invited her, to Europe to see her supposed family's ancestral home. Janice drew a deep breath and stretched out a long thing hand for the elaborate door hammer. Part of her wanted to just run away. The Clarks had raised her, she did not need any other family than then, she should leave no while she still had the chance. But her curiosity got the better of her, and a bit hesitantly Janice banged the door hammer hard against the door three time.
The door was opened almost immediately. A tall man dressed as a butler looked out into the fading day, saw Janice, looked her up and down once and said. "Ah it is you. Please follow me Lady Belmont." Janice was about to say that she was neither a Lady nor a Belmont, he was a plain a simple high school student from Tennessee USA. But the tall servant had already turned and was walking into the wast interior of the mansion. Janice sigh, she did not want to seam ungrateful for the invitation or rude so she just thinks lead the way Lurch, and follows the man into the Belmont home.
The man servant takes Janice to a large dining room. A massive symphony table dominated the room. The walls was decorated whit portraits of stern looking men and woman, and on the back wall was a beautiful marble fireplace that filled the room whit light and warmth. At the end of the table, whit her back to the fireplace sat a woman. Her hair was gray and drawn up into an elegant bun at the top of her head. Her eyes was blue and there was an indescribable majesty to the old woman. Before her on the table lay of all things and old and worn leather single tail whip. Janice stared at the weapon, she was shocked, not just becouse of the strangeness of finding something like that on a dining room table in a fine manor house, but becouse the crude weapon spoke to her. Janice somehow felt the whip on the table was the piece she had always felt was missing from her being. That feeling of emptiness that had made her search out her origins. The old woman stood, there was a rustle of silk as she did so. Slowly the old woman walks over to Janice. "I see you have found the Vampire Killer." Janice looks strangely at her hostess. "The Vampire Killer, what do you mean?" The old woman pointed at the whip resting on the polished surface of the dining room table. Janice crooks an eyebrow. "The whip? The whip have a name?" The old woman nods. "It have more than that, that whip have a destiny...but please forgive me, I am forgetting myself. I am Mariah Belmont, and you my dear is my granddaughter I did not know for sure before I saw you whit the whip, but now that I have seen how you reacted to the sight of the Belmont whip I am positive. My dear daughter. Rachel, your mother managed to hide her precious child away before Dracula got to her. Thank all that is holy. The Belmont family still lives, it still have a chance." Janice looks strangely at the old woman, was she insane, what was she talking about, Dracula and destiny. Yes she had to be crazy witch meant Janice should get out of here as soon as she possibly could.
Janice turned on her heal and begun to back track her step out of the dining room again. As she went her eyes never left the whip on the table. Stuttering she said. "I am sorry Ma'am, I think you must have the wrong person....good day to you...I will find my own way out. Than you for having me." The old woman lifted one hand and said in so begging a tone that Janice stopped in her tracks. "Please, Janice, I know all of this must sound strange, but if you will give me a moment to explain. I promise I will not hurt you and you are free to go any time you wish to." Janice sigh, she could not just leave the old woman when there was so much despair in her voice. And besides, the agency said that this woman Mariah Belmont was her grandmother, how could she refuse her, even if she was crazy? So Maria hesitantly let herself be let to a chair and sat down to listen to the incredible story the oldlady had to tell.
"See that portrait there?" Begun Mariah and pointed to an old, dusty painting of an elegant looking young man whit unruly blond hair and sad blue eyes. Janice nodded. "That is the founding father of our family. Baron Leon Belmont. It was he that created the weapon you now find yourself so attracted to my dear. When his beloved Sara was transformed into one of the living dead, she, clutching to the last of her humanity begged Leon to kill her, thereby infusing his magical whip whit her soul and making it the bade of all vampires." Janice blinked. "Vampires...magic? Ma'am you can not be serious? You are speaking in metaphors right?" The old lady shook her head. "No child, I am dead serious, the things you find so incredible are as real as you and me...and it is you duty as a daughter of the Belmont family to take up the Vampire Killer now, yes for the whip was named so after Sara's sacrifice, and go out into the world and kill the undead monsters that stalk the land. Janice almost laugh, but he manage to hold her giggle back, it seamed like the old woman was actually believing the nonsense he was saying, she had to be insane. "Eh Lady, let me see if I got this straight, you are telling me I am descended from some old Baron, that murdered his vampiric lover, making this whip, that very whip lying on the table there magical, and now it is my duty to hunt down vampires?" The old woman nodded. "Exactly, you are the last living member of the Belmont bloodline. Your mother was killed the night she gave you to the orphanage. It hurt her more than anything to give you up but she knew that was the only way you would be safe. Listen to me Janice. I know what I say sounds crazy, but give me one chance to prove it to you, one chance. That is all I ask. After that, if you are not convinced about the validity of my words then you may walk out of here, but give me at least one attemnt to save my family." Again there was so much grief and sorrow, so much desperation in the old woman's voice that Janice could not refuse her. What would it harm her to indulge the old woman, she hardly seamed dangerous, just a bit confused. Poor old dear, cooped up in this old mansion whit nothing but that creepy servant to keep her company. She had probably made up this wild story for herself to ease her boredom, and then begun to believe in her own faerie tale. "All right, what do you want me to do? I guess I can stay a bit longer. But just so you know, I do not believe any of this." The old woman gave a big warm smile. She points to the whip on the table. Or the Vampire Killer as she called it. "I understand child, and you will believe in time....you will believe in time. Now just pick up the Vampire Killer, that is all I want you to do. Just pick up the whip." Janice stretch out a slender hand toward the antique weapon. "And that is all I have to do, just pick up the whip?" The old woman nods. "That is all my dear." And Janice did so, in the span of a few seconds her life was changed, forever.
Janice's mind was bombarded whit images, scents and feelings. Slivers of lives lived by others, slivers of memories flooded into her. She saw a pretty young woman standing before her one true love. She recognized Leon Belmont, a look of anguish on his face as he broth his enchanted whip down on Sara, killing her instantly, creating the Vampire Killer in the process. Then the images changed, she saw men and women, all of the wielding whit whip she now held, all of them fighting and dying to keep the world free of evil. She saw the woman she knew was her mother fight a powerful demon, Dracula himself. Weeping Janice fell to the floor. The Vampire killer still clutched in her hand. Above her she heard the old woman say whit pride in her voice. "The Belmont whip have accepted you, it is yours now."
Slowly Janice got to her feet. The old woman put a hand under her arm to steady her. "Careful now, do not faint my dear. I know it is allot to take in." Janice looks at the whip whit open amazement. "You mean it is all true, what you told me, it is all true." The old woman nods sadly. "Yes my dear, it is all true, and I am so sorry to place this burden on your young shoulders, but there was no one else. Now child you must listen to me. My servant will get you anything you need, he will help you study, tell you the family history, help you become the warrior you have to be. For you must be strong my dear, you must be strong to challenge the powers of darkness and live." Janice smiles weakly and let the old woman lead her back to her seat and its down. "But can not you teach me grandmother?" Mariah shake her head, and as she did she begun to look less solid. In a mild voice she said. "That would be impossible my beloved. You see, when I told you that you was the last living Belmont, I did not lie. I died Janice, three years ago. But I could not leave the material plane, not before I had found my Rachel's missing daughter, not before I knew the Vampire Killer had a new guardian. Now I can depart my darling. Now I can join my kin on our Lord's lap. I am finally free now that the world have found a new hero." And whit the the old woman's form slowly turned into thin smoke and disappeared. A peaceful look on her old, weather worn face. Janice whit tears in her eyes looks at the disappearing from, then she whispered. "Good bye grandmother."
That night Janice went to bed in the master bedroom of the Belmont mansion. The Vampire Killer lay on the night stand, not more that a feet away from her. She would never be separated from that whip, not as long as she drew breath, for it was a part of her now. She was no longer Janice Clark a average American collage student. She was Lady Janice Belmont, the vampire huntress, and the scourge of the evil minions of the Lord of the undead, Dracula.
