Baron

They were walking in the grounds. It was a bright afternoon and a few flowers were pushing themselves out of the ground on the banks of the lake.

"This place is not nearly half as scary as I thought," Ernest was commenting to Helena, "and here, round the back of the Castel, there is almost no evidence of the battle at all!"

Victor was also vaguely aware of Vladimir thanking him for presiding over the wedding, but his friend's joy at being married to Helena was not what was at the forefront of his mind.

The previous evening, after Helena and Vladimir had left the room, he had followed them to the door. He had felt guilty about eavesdropping, but it had told him what he already suspected: that he was a prisoner here.

He needed to escape, to think things over. He would pack his trunk and leave in secret.

Tonight, he would begin the long, arduous journey back to Geneva, and freedom.

But now he thought about it, Geneva did not feel like home anymore. He imagined returning there, and felt no pang of longing, nor any feeling of hope now that he planned to go. Ernest would return to Geneva soon, and bring Hecate with him, for they planned to marry there and live in Château Frankenstein.

Victor wanted no more part in this affair. He was tired of vampires and witches and werewolves, tired of warlocks and madmen and armies, tired of grief and secrets and death.

He would leave his trunk behind, and go up the nearby hill to think and to be alone.

That very evening he stole away while the others slept. He left a note saying for the others to continue to Geneva without him. He told them he was taking a short holiday and would soon return.

It was a lie, but it would keep them quiet.

After he had been scrambling up the hill for several minutes, it began to rain. It rained thickly and heavily, fat, cold drops.

Victor's hair was dripping in his eyes and his clothes were plastered to his skin, but he refused to return. Even from here he could still see the last few corpses lying on the battlefield.

The only thing that place could offer him was death.

Shivering, Victor hauled himself up the hill until he found a small shelf of rock that provided some shelter beneath it from the wind and rain. Shivering, he huddled in its shadow to wait out the storm.

Several hours later, as dawn was streaking the sky to the east, he saw the carriage roll away from Castel Dracula, past the rapidly decomposing remains of the dead. Helena was leaning out of the window, a handkerchief pressed to her face. The rain fell around her and she looked the picture of misery.

She seemed to catch sight of Victor, but at that very moment the coachman whipped the horses to a gallop and the carriage disappeared around a bend in the road.

Victor waited in the rain for many hours, until exhaustion overtook him and he slipped into fevered dreams of burning lakes, walking corpses and withered trees.

When he opened his eyes, he was shivering with cold, but the rain was gone and the sun was shining on him brightly. By its position he guessed it was mid afternoon.

As he stood, leaning against the rock face in the sun, he slowly stopped shivering. He tried to think clearly about all that he felt for his friends, but he felt ill and confused, and an ache appeared between his eyes when he thought for too long.

He was considering starting on the long road home, when he heard a familiar voice.

"Victor," she called. He turned.

Descending from the summit, smiling at him with a tenderness that made him feel warm inside, was Elizabeth. Her hair was longer than in life, and she seemed to glow with a radiance that almost made it hard to look at her, but it was unmistakably her. Her eyes twinkled and as she approached him, he saw that she still wore her white nightgown that she had worn when Adam killed her.

"Hello, my love," she whispered. Victor stared at her, amazed and a little afraid. He shook his head and rubbed his eyes, but she was still there.

"This cannot be real," he muttered, "you died! Adam killed you, I was there!"

"I have been sent back to help you," she replied, "for I sense that you are alone and afraid, and know not what to do."

"I do now!" cried Victor, pulling a sharp stone from the soil at his feet, "I will kill myself now and be united with you forever!"

But Elizabeth shook her head.

"Do not die, my love. For you have friends still, and there is life ahead of you, and hope. I believe that you can start again. You still have a family. Go home, Victor. Go home."

Victor gazed at her in silence. It had been a long time since he had felt so at peace, and he had no wish to return to his Château.

"Think upon this advice, my dearest one," Elizabeth told him, and then pointed towards the road.

"There lies your way," she urged him. He turned to look at the road, and when he looked back, Elizabeth had vanished.

He toyed with the sharp rock, throwing it from one hand to the other, then he lifted his arm and hurled it away.

After a few more minutes thinking, Victor set off down the hill and towards the road home.