Chapter 32: Six Weeks

Braila

Yvette mounted the horse, a pack slung over her shoulder.

'You sure you can find them?' Law asked.

Yvette smiled and lifted the pendant around her neck. 'Do you know when I got to Trevor, he was seconds away from being put to the sword? It wasn't luck that I came from exactly the right angle to save him.'

Law looked at his wife in question.

'Leon Belmont had the pendant made after Yvette passed the seven-year mark and a new Slayer was called,' Eliza said. 'He consulted me on it. It's designed as a sort of way-finder when the wearer is looking for other members of the bloodline. It pretty much just guides her straight to him.'

Law pulled a face. 'Then the night after the purge, you'd have known that Trevor was the only survivor. Why did you go looking for his parents in the Hold? You knew you wouldn't find them.'

'I knew I wouldn't find Gabriel,' Yvette said. 'But Marie married into the family. She was not a Belmont by blood. The pendant would not trace her. Even though she didn't, the chance did still exist that she may have escaped into the Hold.'

Law nodded.

'Now,' Yvette said, 'I'm off to find Trevor. I'll tell him about this pen Carmilla's scheming and we'll see what happens.'

'You've got your transmission mirror?' Eliza asked.

Yvette smiled and jerked a thumb over her shoulder.

'Good luck,' Law said. 'I doubt you'll need speed. The amount of time they'd need to erect the pen is over quadruple the amount of time you'd need to find Trevor and Sypha.'

'A few weeks at most, I expect,' Yvette said, moving off.

Week One, Unknown Forest

Trevor tumbled through the branches.

Pulling back the Morning Star, he flicked it out. Catching one of the stronger branches, he swung through the trees. The reanimated skeletons bounded along after him. The trouble was they had to find and kill the vampire magician that was reanimating them. He had a pretty idea where the bastard was.

Trevor pulled the Morning Star to himself as he swung around and pulled himself up onto a branch. Standing up straight, he surveyed the skeletons. Must've been a lot of people left to rot around here. It may have been a battlefield once. The skeletons made inhuman screeches and charged at him again.

Trevor shifted and snapped the Morning Star out. The nearest skeleton was shattered, but another landed on the branch with him and Trevor used his short sword to start fighting them off again. He ran across the tree branches, putting some space between them and him, before turning and lashing at them with the Morning Star again.

Hopping down, he bounded across the branches, taking out several more skeletons.

Sypha ran over the top of her ice stepping stones.

Rage mostly fuelled her. She still couldn't get out of her mind what had happened in Lindenfeld. Part of her, she acknowledged, felt guilty. She should have been paying more attention and noticed what kind of man the Judge really was. But all she could do about it was to take her rage out on the monsters they ran into.

Leaping into the air, Sypha smashed her ice into a skeleton, breaking both of them up into pieces. She bounded across the branches before creating more stepping stones to rush up. The skeletons followed after. She turned her head as a skeleton with a bow and arrow, with some hair still attached to the skull, fired an arrow it her.

The arrow nicked her. Sypha grunted. She grunted again as she launched a spiked ball of ice at her attacker. The ice lodged into the skeleton's ribcage and knocked him from his perch. Landing on a branch, she thrust her hand out and grunted for a third time. She shattered the ice and, as such, shattered the skeleton archer. But too late she noticed the attack on the branch she was standing on.

A skeleton swept by and sliced the branch by the root. Sypha began to fall. In the corner of her eye, she saw Trevor, in the distance, twist around in alarm. Quickly she formed ice patches to slow her fall. They weren't the only things she smashed through though. She grunted in pain as she broke through wood as well. As she spun through the air, though, she saw the vampire responsible for this. She finally managed to catch herself on an ice platform.

He was kneeling at the foot of a large tree, chanting with his fingers pressed to his forehead and purple lights hovering about his head.

Bones rained from above and Sypha overbalanced.

She was soon plummeting again.

She didn't even feel herself hit the ground.

Sypha was just suddenly in a shallow puddle with her head spinning. The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end and she struggled to push herself up. She knew she had to move. But the feeling went away as she heard a loud splash. Turning, Sypha saw that the vampire was face-down in the water. Trevor had just buried his sword in his back and was standing over the now-dead vampire.

The dark magic faded away and the skeletons all dropped.

Sypha climbed to her feet and looked up. She took a moment to catch her breath and looked at her lover. 'Next time, find somewhere less dangerous to pee, huh?'

Trevor was in the process of cleaning off his sword. 'Yeah.'

Muntenia

'Shit!' Yvette swore as she swung her sword in a wide arc.

Hunchbacks were always a real pain in the arse. They never attacked you until you got close, but they were always bunched together. That meant that you couldn't take them out without getting close to several of them at once. That was why you always wanted a long sword when dealing with these bastards.

Oh, well.

At least they didn't take much to take down.

Week Two, Undisclosed Ruins

Trevor and Sypha stood in what was supposed to be an abandoned town.

The rain was pouring down. They were surrounded by night creatures.

'This isn't my fault,' Trevor announced.

'That's fair,' Sypha said. 'This one's on me. I will make it right.'

'On your own?' Trevor asked pointedly. 'We're outnumbered. They're bigger than us, and they look quite annoyed.'

'You may want to crouch,' Sypha said.

With a roar, the Night Creatures charged.

The rainwater around them moved, forming a razor-sharp ice disk around them. The Night Creatures charged right into it and impaled themselves on it. Then Sypha began to spin the disk, effectively sawing all of the Night Creatures right in half. As soon as they were all dead, she stopped the disk and let it drop back into water.

The two of them looked around, and then headed to the opening the Night Creatures had come out of. 'Look.'

There was a portrait of Dracula hanging in there.

'Where did they get that?' Trevor wondered.

'Perhaps it washed out of the castle at Braila. No wonder these creatures were so angry.'

'We disturbed them while they were praying to it.'

Ploiesti

'I hate zombies!' Yvette slashed down again.

It was even worse happening right in the middle of a city. The walking rotting corpse collapsed in front of her. By now, she could see the token that was raising the dead. She just had to get to it…in the middle of a Black Death burial site. Closing her eyes, Yvette gave herself into her senses. Every sense opened up and Yvette felt the muscles in her body loosen.

Yvette moved like fluid, slicing her way through every zombie, until she came to the token.

CRACK!

The token broke.

The zombies crumbled.

Week Three, Random Town

Inside a church, somewhere in Wallachia, a man was held up by his throat by a vampire priest.

He choked and gasped as he struggled against the inhumanly strong grip. There was a wall of green glowing writing next to him. A line of people behind him were the next sacrifices after he was done for. There was no hope. He was surely about to die. But then something unexpected happened.

There was a sound like a chain that'd been flung out.

The grip on his throat loosened.

Opening his eyes, the man saw the vampire looking over his shoulder. The would-be victim looked over. There was a man and a woman standing at the end of the aisle. They both had dark looks on their faces. The man had a long scar over one eye and the woman wore blue robes. The man suddenly yanked the chain in his hand.

The vampire was yanked away and dropped him. The would-be murder victim scrambled back.

The man with the chain shifted as the woman lifted a hand that seemed to be on fire. The top end of the pew peg, now sharpened at one end, was thrown up. The man caught it. The vampire resisted the pull of the chain a moment longer before he tried to charge his attacker, only to be stabbed right through the heart.

After one choked coughing sound, the vampire withered and fell down dead.

The couple turned their attention to the altar.

The woman walked forward first. 'It's a spell,' she said in a foreign accent. 'Murder wakes it up.'

'What kind of spell?' her male companion asked, stepping over the corpse and following her up to the altar.

'Resurrection,' the woman said. 'It wouldn't have worked. It's missing parts. But he would have killed these people to try.'

'And the sigil?' the man asked.

'It will have the name of the person he was trying to bring back from the dead.'

The man lifted a hand to the bridge of his nose and pinched. 'Oh, let me guess.'

'It decodes as Vlad Dracula Tepes.' She looked at him severely.

'Why the fuck would anyone do that?' The man looked over at them. Several of them shrugged. 'Hm?' he said. 'Would you do that?'

They shook their heads.

'No.' He turned back around. 'Exactly. God, this is getting on my nerves. I wish I could fucking kill you twice!'

Buzău

It was a good thing that Slayers did not necessarily need their eyes.

Yvette had walked into the area, taken one look at the statues and then huffed. She'd taken a strip of material from her travelling cloak and made herself a blindfold. Sure enough, she soon heard the hissing of the snakes. Medusa Heads were a pain in her arse but at least they were lone monsters.

They automatically turned any other life form that saw them to stone.

…Including other Medusa Heads.

Week Four, A Field

Sypha dodged. 'Shit!'

Trevor almost paused, unsure of what he'd heard. 'What did you just say?' He turned to block another Fleaman.

'I said "shit" okay!' Sypha retorted. She sent a wave of fire at another Fleaman.

'Yes,' Trevor said as he continued fighting off the Fleamen, 'it's just that you never, y'know, curse.'

Not even when he had her in his bed, and he was doing things to her that would make any other woman curse hard enough to make a sailor blush.

Trevor dodged an attack by another Fleaman.

'I never used to!' Sypha snapped. 'And then all this happened, and then you happened!'

Trevor sliced through another Fleaman. 'Me?'

'Yes, you!' she snapped. 'I was nice! And then I met you, and now I'm like you!' She slapped a hand to her face.

Trevor straightened up from his latest kill. 'Oh, so it's my fault?' he instantly turned to block another Fleaman coming at him. He stabbed it as it knocked him over and rolled to his feet.

'It's all your fault!' Sypha insisted. 'You did this to me!'

Trevor turned to her. 'I found you, turned into a statue in a fucking tomb!' He spun around to face the next Fleaman coming at him.

Sypha devolved into a rant. 'And climbed all over me. And since that moment, everything's been shit! And—' She let out an enraged yell. 'Fucking talking here!' Trevor was impressed to see her incinerate the Fleamen charging her in a wild inferno. She then turned around. 'You turned me into someone who says "shit"!'

Well…that was very…erratic. As was her ranting again. Trevor cocked his head. He'd gotten her mad before, but never that mad. That almost seemed to come out of nowhere. He'd almost think she was just fed up with the monsters, but that wasn't how she behaved when she was fed up. A theory began to formulate in the back of his mind.

His father's voice echoed in the back of his mind. 'Overdramatic outbursts are always the first sign you'll see, Trevor.'

Făurei

Okay. This is kinda fun.

Yvette bounded across the backs of the harpies. She ripped through them as she went. There were thousands of the things, but she moved with her senses. They tried to overwhelm her. Their problem was that Slayers had been designed to be the ultimate killing machines. A properly-motivated Slayer could take on the armies of hell, no trouble.

But Yvette was curious.

These attacks were far too frequent to be mere coincidence.

Well, it wasn't like she could just ask a harpy.

Week Five, Undisclosed Village

Adults were being beaten down with clubs.

In front of them, their children were being shoved at an altar. A little girl was shoved forward. She stumbled and fell to her knees at the altar. Looking up at the statue, she whimpered. One of the strangers used his club to push her down. She let out a few sobs, tears streaming from her eyes. One of the strangers stood over her. He lifted a large scythe, ready to bring it down.

Suddenly though, it turned red-hot. The handle shattered and the man dropped it. He doubled over. The club was pulled off of her back. Surprised, the girl looked around. Looking behind her, she saw what had happened. Another set of strangers ran out of the woods, both looking very angry.

'Human sacrifice really is back in fashion!' the woman called in a strange accent.

The man, though, was local. 'Do we think this is about Dracula again?'

Fire appeared on the ends of the woman's hands. 'I think these people are just out of their minds!'

'So we're not gonna try and reason with them?'

The woman used the fire to launch herself up. 'No!' She landed on the face of one of the bad men. She knocked him over but she made a perfect landing. 'They're going to murder children!'

She turned on another one.

'Kids!' the man called. 'Lay down flat! Now!' He flicked out his chain-whip thing.

The girl turned her head again and watched her friends all throw themselves down. The end of the chain smashed into the faces of their attackers.

The woman continued her own attack on the man she'd turned to fight.

The girl had no idea what was going on, and she had no idea what to think. She'd always been taught that magic was bad but…this woman was using it to defend them. Maybe magic wasn't so bad. This woman certainly wasn't bad. Maybe it really depended on what you did with magical powers.

Another man attacked the woman. She turned her fire on him and ended up lighting him on fire.

Yet another man attacked the woman's partner. He was caught, however, and with two jabs from the scarred man, he fell back dead. The next man tried to attack him, only for the scarred man to neatly dodge and then knock him back before using his chain whip to strangle the man to death. But then the first man came at him, sneaking up behind and grabbing the scarred man's throat.

For a moment or two, the girl worried.

The chain whip was knocked aside. He didn't seem to be able to get the right purchase to free himself. But then the man brought his elbow down on the bad man's, forcing a scream out and making him pull his arms in. The scarred man then plunged his thumbs into the bad man's eyes and knocking him down too. The scarred man took a moment to catch his breath.

By that time, the foreign woman was using her fire to burn through all their ropes and allow them to run back to their parents.

Hours later, Sypha stood with Trevor on the altar and looked up at the statue.

'What's that thing?' she asked. She thought she'd heard of and seen everything, travelling with her caravan. But she'd never seen anything like it. It seemed to be a skeleton wearing a cloak and holding a long scythe.

'I've seen drawings in books,' Trevor said. 'He has a lot of names. Most often he's called the Grim Reaper, or just Death.'

Sypha looked over at her lover. 'He's actually death? I mean, this is what…death looks like?' She looked back at the statue. 'Because I was hoping for something nicer.'

'Nah,' Trevor said. It was a common mistake to make, but no. 'Just people from an earlier time trying to understand what they were seeing.' He reached up and tapped the cheekbone of the statue. 'There are elemental beings that just…feed on things in nature. He's not death, he just eats death.'

Sypha watched him a moment. It wasn't very often he knew something she didn't. 'So this is just a shrine to him for people who still think this is death itself?'

'Paying tribute.' Trevor leaned up. 'Maybe in the hope that he can give Dracula back to them.' He turned back around. 'Don't get me wrong. He's supposed to be lethal, but he's not the sort of power who can reach into hell and pull someone out.' He looked down at the ground. 'The whole world's gone crazy.'

'And this big stone?' Sypha asked, looking down at the stone that had been meant as the sacrifice platform.

'Flagstone.' Trevor hopped off of the altar. 'Must have been prised up from a town square somewhere.'

'What's the nearest place that would have flagstones in their square?' Sypha asked.

'Targoviste.'

Ianca

Yvette was finally fed up.

So she locked the last of the vampire attackers down. She'd heard that remark. Now, she had a chance to get some answers. Unlike most of the other supernatural nasties, vampires had the capacity for speech. They still killed and ate like gluttons, but they were more prone to having answers extracted.

'Who?' she said, lifting her sword and pressing the tip to the last vampire's neck.

'Who what?' the vampire asked.

'I heard what you said.' She imitated his outraged yell. '"He never said she was a Belmont!" Who sent you here?'

'You'll let me go if I tell you?' the vampire asked.

Yvette frowned and slashed across his belly. His guts immediately spilled out as he screamed and rolled. Yvette had always found torture…distasteful. And the longer you did it, the less reliable it was. If he didn't spill in two or three slashes, she'd just continue on. But he didn't take much.

'Varney!' he spat out.

Yvette pulled a face. She hadn't heard Varney's name in quite a while. The last she'd heard of him, he'd been killed by a London-based Slayer. Of course, it had been one controlled by the Watcher's Council. That would hardly be the first time they'd mistakenly declared a Master Vampire dead.

'Why?' Yvette asked.

'I dunno! He just doesn't want you to get to Targoviste!'

Yvette pressed her lips together. 'Fine.' She sliced the vampire's head off. 'Then I am going to Targoviste.'

Week Six

Trevor fought one vampire, while Sypha fought another.

They were better than your average vampire. It didn't help that Trevor was exhausted from six weeks of fighting nearly non-stop. Being disarmed was a testament to that. Trevor then took a punch to the face that sent him flying back into a set of spears. Then the vampire managed to pull a massive cleaver out of seemly nowhere.

But before he could swing it, something sailed into both vampires.

A lance first sailed through the head of the vampire Sypha was fighting and then continued on to punch through the head of the vampire with the cleaver. Both vampires were pinned to the wall just on Trevor's left. And then they withered. Trevor and Sypha both looked to see where the lance had come from.

Yvette Belmont stood in the doorway. 'Evening.'