Intermission: Fading

Eighteen or so years earlier.

The Lady Seras Victoria Draculina arrived suddenly and without warning.

All of Poenari felt her return like a shock of icy water, harrowing to the bone and their skins crawled with disquiet. Recognizing something was wrong, Walter Dornez abandoned his tasks and ran out to meet the lady in the courtyard. She stood in the pouring rain, cloak soaked through and her hair in tangled, wet loops about her frantic, red eyes. When she saw him, she angrily bared her fangs and drew back, clutching something close to her, before she recognized him.

Perturbed, though nonetheless an adept and proud retainer, Walter gave a respectful nod. "Welcome home, my lady."

Draculina strode toward him without a word and Walter found himself compelled to hold out his hands to receive the parcel she carried. "Secure the citadel, Walter. I know not if I was followed."

Walter was astonished. "What?"

"Do it!" she snapped, then whirled around as the rest of Poenari's staff came forward, drawn by her distress out of concern or, in some cases, amusement or fear. "Zorin! Wolf!" Lightning flashed across the grey sky, followed by reverberating thunder as the beastly vampiress came forward, for once too astonished to say anything, much less her usual scornful words. The Werewolf, of course, said nothing at all as he emerged from his place by the gate. Seras turned to them and drew herself up, a rather sorry effect given her drenched appearance. "Set a watch in all directions. Cardinal, ordinal, above, below, everywhere. If there's even a slight movement, I want to know about it."

"My lady, what is—" Walter began, only to realize with yet another shock the object she had so suddenly thrust into his arms was wriggling about and tiny mewls could be heard against the pounding rain. It was a baby! As he pulled aside the damp blanket protecting, so to speak, the poor creature's face, he saw it could not have been more than a few days old if not merely a week. What was going on? Seras was not the sort of vampire to go snatching infants from their cradles, and even if she was, for what reason could she be so frightened this night? He looked up to see his mistress now issuing instructions to the Valentine brothers and Alhambre, her gestures urgent but controlled. Not mad then. He breathed a sigh of relief.

"You ought to take the wee thing inside," Schrödinger's voice drawled as he appeared beside him. Walter covered the infant again. "He might catch a chill. Who can say how long our Lady Seras has had him out in this foul weather?"

Walter knew the werecat was right, and yet he could not yet bring himself to turn away from Seras as she moved on to speak with van Winkle, gently but firmly shaking the timid markswoman by her shoulders. Whose child was this? One of their neighbors? No, the Belmonts didn't have any children this young in their household. A foundling? Perhaps. The practice of infanticide was not uncommon in the area when babes were found to be malformed, or female. This child's face seemed regular enough, so was there some deformity concealed by the blanket? "Seras."

The lady of Poenari rounded on him.

"Who is this?"

The baby gave a cry of displeasure then, and Seras' face contorted in anxiety. "His name is Adrian. Keep him safe, Walter."

Circumstances must be truly dire then, thought the old steward, if Seras was entrusting the infant's safety to him, the most trusted of all her staff. "And what is happening, my lady? From whom are we defending this child and Poenari?"

The answer should have been one he expected, and yet he was again startled by his lady's words.

"His father. Dracula."

1476, Present Day

With the dawn came merciful silence.

So thought Walter as he ambled his way through the long hallways of Castle Dracula, taking his time to enjoy the rare moment of tranquility from the squabbling Generals. Many of them had retired for the day, with some exceptions. Earlier in his wanderings, he had discovered Dragoslav and Sharma engaged in an extended game of chess and when he had passed by the library, he found Cho-hime immersed in several tomes, her long fingernails sliding delicately along the the ancient ink and fragile parchment. She had looked up at him when he lingered in the doorway and offered a deferential nod. Of all the vampires present in this fortress, he was among the oldest, if not the oldest. The matter lay between him and the silent Eastern princess, and who could say definitively how long they had each walked the earth? Smiling in turn, Walter continued onward and made his way to the east wing where his lady's chamber lay. After the council meeting earlier, Draculina had departed the throne room with a face only a small number of souls could recognize as troubled. Since then, none of the Poenari staff had seen nor heard from her. For his part, Walter hesitated in seeking her out, given that she had dragged the Librarian off with her and he had no wish to interrupt whatever pursuits they indulged in.

Now, with the rising sun, he felt a growing concern for the lady's absence. Though it was in bad taste for a servant to disturb when he had not been called, the warm affection he held for his lady compelled to at least ensure all was well.

When he arrived at the heavy door to Draculina's apartments, silence was heard from within, so he allowed himself to knock. No one bid him enter nor answered at all, so he carefully opened the door into the solar. The chamber itself was dark, the hearth having gone out hours ago, but he could see the light of a single candle burning through the doorway to the darkened bedchamber and Seras' gunpowder and lily scent drifted out to him. "My lady?" he inquired as he entered the room. Slowly circling the tester bed, he pulled aside the drapery to find the vampiress laying on her side, still in her red evening dress, her gaze listless and vague with thought. Smiling a kind smile, Walter asked, "What are you doing, Seras, sitting here in the dark? Alone?"

"I am remembering," she murmured.

"Oh?" He tied the canopy in place, and with a familiarity to which he alone of her servants was privileged, he took a seat on the mattress beside her. "And what is in your heart this morning, little one?"

Seras smiled at the endearment and closed her eyes. "The crowded market of Brăila. The feel of my mother's hands on my cheeks. The smell of the pine trees in Cașcaval. Crouching in a shield wall in the north with Striga on one side of me and Wolf on the other. Snow on the Volga River. Fire on the Danube. Simpler times."

Walter sighed and brushed his hand across her brow, smoothing fair bangs from her face. "What else?"

"Lenore's smile and her cleverness. Missing her. Hating her for what she did."

"It was a difficult choice, my lady," he comforted her. "But you must never doubt the necessity of it."

She squeezed her eyes even more tightly shut. "Grieving for old friends. Wondering after old enemies."

"And current ones too, I imagine."

"Lisa's hopes and dreams…plans that never came to be. And blood spilled without cause or justice."

Walter turned away. He had not known the wife of Dracula well. Her visits to Poenari were few and far between, and until this year, he had not set foot in Castle Dracula for several decades, nor had he ever been to Lupo. Yet his lady's fondness for the human woman had been apparent to all of them, and her loss had been keenly felt. Such an abhorrent way to die, he thought. Fire, of course, could not consume the life of a vampire, but he had been burned many times either by natural flame or magician's hex and always the result was agony. To be enveloped, unable to flee, suffocating on smoke…he shook himself. "I think your earlier musings of happier memories served you better, my lady."

With a rustle of fabric, Seras pushed herself upright and leaned her head on his shoulder. "Always you have been here for me, Walter. Ever since I was a scared, newly turned fledgling without a place in the world."

"And it has always been an honor," he answered, placing his hand on the back of her head.

He felt the lady's hands drift around his torso to clasp each other at the small of his back and she burrowed her head further into the hollow of his neck. "Tell me, Walter. Is my master truly beyond saving?"

Images of her broken and bruised flashed behind his eyes and the ancient vampire tightened his hold on her. "I think you know the answer to that, Seras."

A low sigh and then she pulled away, hand on his arm. "Then there is something I must tell you."

-0-0-0-

Author's Notes: Still alive. Apologies for the short chapter after a long wait. Longer chapters to come. Not much I can say about Seras' bizarre behavior in the first half of this intermission, but stay tuned.

I own neither of these series.