Author's Notes: I'm sorry for my long line of stinkers, I've really been out of sorts lately. I'll just finish the fics I've posted.

Disclaimer: I do not own Integra, Dracula, Carmilla, or Hellsing.


"The first few weeks of Dalv's stay were, to say the least, an unparalleled joy. Dalv was an absolute treasure to have in the house; and, for the first time, my poor Seras was brimming with delight. Never had I seen her so happy before, nor did I ever see her as happy again. They rarely left each other's side, during all waking hours, and were constantly in each other's confidence; whenever I chanced to behold my niece, she was always seemed to be in the midst of a stroll—or "walkabout," as our dear guest put it—whispering excitedly with her new companion.

"There soon, however, appeared some drawbacks. In the first place, Dalv complained of extreme languor—the weakness that remained after her late illness—and she never emerged from her room till the afternoon was pretty far advanced.

"In the next place, it was accidentally discovered, although she always locked her door on the inside, and never disturbed the key from its place till she admitted the maid to assist at her toilet, that she was undoubtedly sometimes absent from her room in the very early morning, and at various times later in the day, before she wished it to be understood that she was stirring."

"My good man," my father exclaimed. "However could you believe this?"

"She was repeatedly seen from the windows of the schloss, in the first faint grey of the morning, walking through the trees, in an easterly direction, and looking like a person in a trance. This convinced me that she walked in her sleep. But this hypothesis did not solve the puzzle. How did she pass out from her room, leaving the door locked on the inside? How did she escape from the house without unbarring door or window?

"In the midst of my perplexities, an anxiety of a far more urgent kind presented itself.

"My dear child began to lose her looks and health, and that in a manner so mysterious, and even horrible, that I became thoroughly frightened.

"She was at first visited by appalling dreams. Then, she was visited by a spectre, sometimes resembling Dalv, sometimes in the shape of a beast, walking round the foot of her bed from side to side. Lastly came sensations."

"Sensations?" my father breathed.

"Sensations," the General confirmed. "One, not unpleasant, but very peculiar, she said, resembled the flow of an icy stream against her breast. At a later time, she felt something like pair of large needles piercing her, a little below the throat, with a very sharp pain. A few nights after, followed a gradual and convulsive sense of strangulation; then came unconsciousness."

I could hear distinctly every word the kind old General was saying, because by this time we were driving upon the short grass that spreads on either side of the road as you approach the roofless schloss which had not shown the smoke of a chimney for more than half a century.

You may guess how strangely I felt as I heard my own symptoms so exactly described in those which had been experienced by the poor girl who, but for the catastrophe which followed, would have been at that moment a visitor at my father's chateau. You may suppose, also, how I felt as I heard him detail habits and mysterious peculiarities which were, in fact, those of our beautiful guest, Alucard!

"Are you sure these instances were caused by Dalv?" I said, impulsively, forgetting the terms in which custom dictated that I should be silent. "Surely there must have been some other reason for your poor niece's illness; surely you cannot believe it to be done by a young girl?"

"I do believe it," the General said coldly, "And once I've found my proof at Castle Dracula, the world shall know it also."

I could feel, as well as see, the silent reproof for my impertinent behavior, and so I remained silent for the rest of the drive; yet inside my emotions were in turmoil.

A vista opened in the forest; we were on a sudden under the chimneys and gables of the ruined village, and the towers and battlements of the dismantled castle, round which gigantic trees are grouped, overhung us from a slight eminence.

In a frightened dream I got down from the carriage, and in silence, for we had each abundant matter for thinking; we soon mounted the ascent, and were among the spacious chambers, winding stairs, and dark corridors of the castle.

"And this was once the palatial residence of the Draculas!" said the old General at length, as from a great window he looked out across the wide, undulating expanse of the pass. "It was a bad family; for, indeed, it reflects into their very name, for in Slavic Dracula means 'Devil.'"

"Indeed," my father said, "The last lord of this schloss, Count Dracula, was not particularly well-liked or well-known among the locals. There was much rejoice when he went to move to England all those years ago."

"Moved to England?" the General cried, outraged, "And did he not wreak havoc in his wake?"

"Not to the best of my knowledge," my father replied, "But my father, who was in London for business at the time, claims that his immigration was not unlike that of the Irish into English borders, mixing their 'drac-la'-which is Gaelic for 'bad blood,'-with England's "teeming millions."

"Indeed!" the General cried, much in a passion. "The very word 'Dracula' is universally known for its wretchedness, and here its blood-stained annals were written," he continued. "It is hard that they should, after death, continue to plague the human race with their atrocious lusts."

My father and I exchanged uneasy glances.

"That is the chapel of the Draculas, down there."

He pointed down to the grey walls of the Gothic building partly visible through the foliage, a little way down the steep. "And I hear the psalm of a priest," he added, "chanting among the stones that surround it; he possibly may give us the information of which I am in search, and point out the grave of Countess Draculina. That wretched count kept many a beautiful woman in this dungeon of a schloss, one of which could undoubtedly have been his very own daughter."

"What brought you to that conclusion, old friend?"

"Of all the portraits in that wretched fortress," the General said through gritted teeth. "There is but one lady who looks consistently like him, among his other 'brides.'"

"Portraits?" my father asked, thinking it through. "Of course! you are referring to the many paintings of the lords and ladies preserved indefinitely in this noble line; no doubt your Dalv was a descendent?"

"Ay," the General spat. "A hellspawn from a pit of demons."

My father sent the General a glance, which, undeniably, showed his disbelief and disapproval.

"We have a portrait, at home, of Vlad Tepes, the Voivode of Wallachia. He is, I believe, a long standing ancestor of the more recent Dracula line; for, not only do they have the same surname, but his descendants do much resemble him; should you like to see it?" asked my father.

"Time enough, dear friend," replied the General. "I believe that I have seen the original; and one motive which has led me to you earlier than I at first intended, was to explore the chapel which we are now approaching."

"What! see the Impaling Prince," exclaimed my father; "why, he has been dead nearly half a Millennia!"

"I am not talking about the prince," the General barked, "But his wretched descendant, the Countess Draculina."

"I can hardly see where that would help," my father said, "For she is dead as her ancestor."

"Not so dead as you fancy, I am told," answered the General.

"I confess, General, you puzzle me utterly," replied my father, looking at him, I fancied, for a moment with a return of the suspicion I detected before. But although there was anger and detestation in the old General's manner, there was nothing flighty.

"There remains to me," he said, as we passed under the heavy arch of the Gothic church—for its dimensions would have justified its being so styled—"but one object which can interest me during the few years that remain to me on earth, and that is to wreak on her the vengeance which, I thank God, may still be accomplished by a mortal arm."

"What vengeance can you mean?" asked my father, in increasing amazement.

"I mean, to decapitate the monster," he answered, with a fierce flush, and a stamp that echoed mournfully through the hollow ruin, and his clenched hand was at the same moment raised, as if it grasped the handle of an axe, while he shook it ferociously in the air.

"What?" exclaimed my father, more than ever bewildered.

"To strike her head off."

"Cut her head off!"

"Aye, with a hatchet, with a spade, or with anything that can cleave through her murderous throat. You shall hear," he answered, trembling with rage. And hurrying forward he said:

"That beam will answer for a seat; your dear child is fatigued; let her be seated, and I will, in a few sentences, close my dreadful story."

The squared block of wood, which lay on the grass-grown pavement of the chapel, formed a bench on which I was very glad to seat myself, and in the meantime the General called to the priest, who had been removing some boughs which leaned upon the old walls; and, bayonet in hand, the hardy old fellow stood before us.

I felt very uneasy about this priest, for I had often seen him walking about town, casting prayers and hymns for those who would have it, and patronizingly dismissing those who would not. He was kind enough to me, but I was always nervous that he would find out that I, like most Englishwomen, was a Protestant. For some unaccountable reason, for I knew him to be a very benevolent priest, I often had nightmares that he would charge me with bayonets in each hand, which he had once told me were relics from a holy war, while quoting passages from the Holy Bible and screaming "AMEN!"

"General Spielsdorf, Sir Hellsing," he said in greeting, in an accent which, as always, I was unable to identify. "I see you've come to the Devil's ruins for an afternoon visit, and brought your lovely little daughter with you. Ye shouldna done that, since this is no place for a lovely lady, and she does not seem well enough to leave bed, let alone withstand the residual darkness of such a haunted ruin."

"On the contrary, Father," I said, quite breathlessly, "I find this place to be very striking and melancholic."

"More's the pity," the priest said, with a strange glint in his eye. "Yer too young to be mixed up with demons and the like."

I did not have the heart to inform him that I feared it was already too late. Neither did my father, evidently, for he immediately asked after the castle's history.

He could not tell us anything of these monuments; but there was an old man, he said, a farmer in the Pass, at present sojourning in the house of another priest, about two miles away, who could point out every monument of the old Dracula family; and then he undertook to bring him back with him, if we would lend him one of our horses, in little more than half an hour.

"Have you been long employed about this castle?" asked my father of the old holy man.

"I have been a priest here," he answered, "under orders from His Holiness, and the Archbishop, all my days; so has my father before me, and so on, as many generations as I can count up. I could show you the very house in the village here, in which my ancestors lived. Mostly I take care of the children in the orphanage in town, for they do need looking after, and this ruin is rather deserted anyway; but I do come up from time to time, to see that everything's in order."

"How came the castle to be deserted?" asked the General.

"It was troubled by revenants, son; several were tracked to their graves, there detected by the usual tests, and extinguished in the usual way, by decapitation, by the stake, and by burning; but not until many of the villagers were killed."

"Really?" my father enquired, "For I heard that the villagers lived quite in fear of the. . . the revenants, as you call them."

"Indeed, they did," the priest nodded gravely. "But it so happened that the then ruler of the castle wished to retire to some far away land. Free of his oppressive reign, the villagers grew more confident, but when the attacks occurred again, more strongly before, they began to stand up for themselves for the first time that anyone could remember.

"But after all these proceedings according to law," he continued—"so many graves opened, and so many vampires deprived of their horrible animation—the village was not relieved. But a Dutch nobleman, who happened to be traveling this way, along with four gentlemen and a lady, heard how matters were, and being skilled in such affairs, he offered to deliver the village from its tormentor."

"Van Helsing," I heard my father exclaimed under his breath, but the priest did not hear, thankfully, and continued on as before.

"He did so thus: There being a bright moon that night, he ascended, shortly after sunset, the towers of the chapel here, from whence he could distinctly see the churchyard beneath him; you can see it from that window. From this point he watched until he saw the vampire come out of his grave, and place near it the linen clothes in which he had been folded, and then glide away towards the village to plague its inhabitants.

"The stranger, having seen all this, came down from the steeple, took the linen wrappings of the vampire, and carried them up to the top of the tower, which he again mounted. When the vampire returned from his prowling and missed his clothes, he cried furiously to the Dutchman, whom he saw at the summit of the tower, and who beckoned him to ascend and take them. Whereupon the vampire, accepting his invitation, began to climb the steeple, and so soon as he had reached the battlements, the Dutchman, with a stroke of his sword, clove his skull in twain, hurling him down to the churchyard, whither, descending by the winding stairs, the stranger followed and cut his head off, and next day delivered it and the body to the villagers, who duly impaled and burnt them.

"This Dutch nobleman had authority from the then head of the village to remove the tomb of the three noblewomen, including that of the Countess Draculina, which he did effectually, so that in a little while its site was quite forgotten."

"Can you point out where it stood?" asked the General, eagerly.

The priest shook his head, and smiled.

"Not a soul living could tell you that now," he said; "besides, they say her body was removed; but no one is sure of that either."

Having thus spoken, as time pressed, he took his bayonet and departed, leaving us to hear the remainder of the General's strange story.