Chapter 17: The Witch's Apprentice
"But we can't just give up!" Belnades protested when Alucard and the Librarian returned to the fire and passed along Draculina's message. "We've come this far!"
Personally, Bernadotte couldn't really see what the trio had accomplished that was so important compared to the grand scheme of things. They'd fought off a raiding party, temporarily halted the enemy's occupation of Gresit, but in dealing with the head of the snake itself? He couldn't help but notice they had no strategy. They hadn't found a weak point in Dracula's war machine or castle to exploit, nothing that hadn't already been attempted by Belmont's predecessors. Lastly, they'd found no magical artifact to help bring about Dracula's demise, and if he were honest, Bernadotte felt such a thing did not exist in the Belmont Hold. Otherwise, Integra 'the Cast-Iron Bitch' Belmont would have not hesitated in rallying her formidable family against the vampire king and his fledgling.
However, he refrained from pointing of this out, as from the look on the hunters' face, this was already a known flaw in their operation. Alucard, at least, had been somewhat sympathetic with his sister's wishes, even if he in no way intended to be compliant with them.
"How can she expect me to simply walk away?" he demanded.
"Well, she would prefer you run for it, but I suppose walking serves just as well," Bernadotte said with a grin.
Alucard scowled. "He's my father, too. We ought to face him together!"
"Right, like when you confronted him alone over a year ago. Where was your sister zhen?"
"Good question! Where was she when my mother was taken?"
His words cut through him like a sliver of ice and Bernadotte felt his own anger rise within him. "N'ose pas jeter le blâme sur les pieds de ta sœur, Adrian Țepeș," he growled, his lone eye dark with rage. "We are all in equal parts culpable and blameless in what happened to Miss Lisa."
Alucard bared his fangs.
Belnades looked torn between wanting to intervene and letting the situation play out.
It was Belmont who next spoke. "What did you just say?"
The Librarian turned his scowl to him. "'Do not dare to lay blame at your sister's feet, Adrian Țepeș.' Do keep up, Belmont. Even for a vagrant, I would have expected you were taught your family's ancestral tongue."
"I understood you fine," the hunter answered. "About Alucard's mother, the wife of Dracula. What did you just call her?"
Now, Bernadotte's scowl turned to a confused frown. "Miss Lisa. That's how I knew her when I lived in her home. Why?"
Dismay crossed over Belmont's face as he straightened, eyeing him more closely. "Because I just realized where I know you. You were the witch's apprentice."
Quoi? Bernadotte narrowed his eye even further, ready to snap that he was mistaken, that he had never been apprenticed to a witch nor had he even met anyone from House Belmont prior to today. Yet he hesitated. No…that wasn't right. As Alucard and Belnades looked back and forth between the two of them, Bernadotte stared at the hunter. Now that he mentioned it, yes. He had encounted members of the legendary family once. Long ago when he was still living in Lupo village. He remembered a pair of unfamiliar voices outside the house, and then Lisa was leading three strangers, two men and a boy of twelve or thirteen, inside. One of them was limping badly, but when he'd recognized the Belmont crest on their clothes, Bernadotte had leapt to his feet, scared the hunters had heard the witch rumors that had been circulating the region lately and had come to execute his friend.
Lisa was all smiles and asked him, "Pipkin, would you mind grabbing the ointment we made for bruising?" He hated it when she called him Pipkin.
"Merde," he said in disbelief. "Zhat was you, wasn't it?"
He remembered the elder two quite well. Leonel and Arthur were not Wallachian names, and he recalled how their hair was silver-blond in color, and yet their skin was dark in a way that wasn't acquired by a lifetime spent in the sun. He had later learned from Seras this pigmentation was on account of the their Indian grandmother from the Hellsing branch of the family. In contrast, the boy who'd been with them, was dark-haired and significantly paler than his father and uncle. That's right, he had been shocked to learn he was that closely related to them. But their eyes were all the same sharp blue that missed nothing as they scrutinized Lisa's habits and home.
"You were one of the Belmonts in Lupo," Bernadotte repeated and snapped his fingers. "Leonel's boy, oui? Or was zhe other one your father?"
"Leonel was my father's name."
"I remember him. Tell me, how did he hurt his ankle? Did your uncle kick him?"
Belmont blinked. "…yes. Yes, he did."
"Thought so. He did seem unusually smug about it." Then he turned to Alucard. "You see, when you were really young—"
"Mother did actually tell me this story." Alucard interrupted with a pleased smirk as he turned to the hunter. "Who'd have thought you were the one in our house."
"Hard to believe we didn't notice an eight-foot tall vampire and his half-breed child propped up in the corner," Belmont retorted, looking doubtful.
Bernadotte was about to hazard a guess that Dracula and his son had been traveling at the time, and the three Belmonts had been damned lucky in not crossing paths with him when Belnades spoke up for the first time, "How did you come to live with Dracula's family? You told us your mother was a Speaker from Aquitaine. What became of your tribe? We don't abandon our own, so how did you become Dracula's librarian?"
"How indeed." Bernadotte looked at her with a wry smile. "It seems I have a story to tell. Shall I? Or would you all like to get back to the topic of why you should leave Wallachia and leave the conflict to my lady Seras?"
There could be only one answer to a question like that.
Pip Bernadotte was sixteen years old when he should have died, and of the life he'd lived before the appointed hour, he recalled little and the rest he endeavored to forget.
He was born in the French duchy of Aquitaine to one Jehanne Bernadotte. How she and his father met was a tale never made clear to him, just that he was the product of that union. For a Speaker, Mère had no talent for stories. And his father didn't speak much on account of being rather dead at the time of his birth. What many needed to understand about his upbringing was that his mother was a Speaker, and not a good one, else he'd have been raised with her people. For reasons she'd taken to her grave, she had forsaken her caravan and family and had taken her son to travel east with her lover's people, a company of mercenaries who sold their services to the highest bidder. As a child, he'd been as ragtag as the rest of the soldiers of fortune led by his paternal grandfather, those Hungarian footsoldiers, impoverished knights, those noblemen who'd fallen from favor with their sovereigns, janissary deserters, farmfolk with nothing left to lose, highwaymen, disowned sons and runaway daughters, long lost heirs and other rogue Speakers.
He'd spent a childhood changing from war to war, battlefield to battlefield, exchanging allies for enemies and vice versa depending on who held the Wild Geese's contract. The basis for his knowledge in sorcery had been cultivated by Jehanne. She taught him to fight and to kill, to set enemy camps ablaze, and to poison drinking water from afar. Everything that gave Speakers a poor reputation, he imagined.
The day he was meant to die was one of many in the hottest summer he'd ever endured. War in Wallachia had drawn their mercenary band to the Black Sea. There, like the biblical catastrophes of scripture, their demise came in the form of a vile epidemic that scythed through the army quicker than any mortal soldier could. The men who clung to their faith like a lifeline bemoaned the sickness as an act of God as punishment for uncounted sins. Even then, on account of his Speaker mother, he knew it was the disgusting conditions of the camp that killed them. All the unclean wounds, the foul water, the improper disposal of waste, it was actually incredible those fools hadn't realized it sooner. The unburied dead later provided greater devastation to their forces. There were too few living, and most of those stricken, and too many bodies to drag to the burning. His mother was holding him as she died. Though wracked with fever, he felt the life leave her with a horrid, shuddering breath and he saw her green eyes turn dull and glassy. By then he was too weak to cry or pull himself from the corpse's stiffening arms. And no one else came. His grandfather was one of the first to die and any other survivors would have had the sense to flee when they had the chance.
There, trapped by his mother's mortal remains in a puddle of their own filth, was where the boy known as Pip Bernadotte would have died if not for the gentle hands that smoothed over his fevered brow and gingerly avoided his badly infected left eye. "Oh, you poor thing," were the first words Miss Lisa ever said to him. "What evil brought you here?"
As the only survivor to be found, he was brought back to the village called Lupo. He was told later Seras had been on that field as well, and that she was the one who had carried him back. The days he spent delirious in that house were unknown to him. He only remembered waking with a clear head late one afternoon, and one eye short for his trouble. Miss Lisa asked for nothing in return, but one did not abandon so grave a debt. And where else was an orphaned, mournful magician who only knew war and transient living to go? So his life in the Wallachian village began with odd jobs around the doctor's house: sweeping the floors, clearing dust from shelves, cleaning up after meals, organizing the books and the laboratory. He even cared for his savior's child while she was busy with her patients, though he had no experience with children, much less a vampire-human halfling, a revelation that had alarmed him greatly.
It wasn't until some weeks later that he met the vampire the world called Dracula. He'd been sitting on the front steps, teaching the now almost speaking Adrian to say his own name, when a shadow fell across them. He shrank back, but the little dhampir excitedly toddled forward. The vampire king said nothing to him, merely scooped up his son and raised an eyebrow. He could only stare back, daunted by the aura of dread the king exuded, predator to prey, and the monstrous height that towered above him. Then Lisa flung open the door to her house with a laugh and asked, "What on earth are you skulking outside for, love? Come in already!"
"I am merely curious about your guest," he answered in a placid tone that belied his malicious appearance.
"He's no guest," said the female voice behind him, and Dracula moved aside to reveal the Lady Seras. "When last I saw the boy, he was a dying creature liberated from the Ottoman wars. From the looks of things, I'd say he lives here now." Stepping forward, she rested her hand on his cheek and brushed her thumb over the freshly changed bandages there. "Ah, Lisa could not save your eye?"
"Non, madame." He shook his head. "But she tried."
…
"I've been living among vampires ever since." Bernadotte touched his fingers to the patch over his missing eye. "The education my mother began was expanded on by Dracula, Draculina, and Lisa. Eventually, as I got older, I found my place managing the archives and treasury of the castle, made myself useful by searching for artifacts the master wanted."
"You were happy there," Belnades answered him.
Bernadotte smiled at her. "I still am." He still had Seras. He said nothing of his pursuit of her, though. It hadn't been easy winning the affection of a woman who was his senior by over a century. Nor had he been her first or only love. His smile faded and he turned back to Alucard. "I understand you want to put an end to your father's war. I know it's what Lisa would have wanted."
The dhampir said nothing.
"But I also know she too would have wanted you out of harm's way," he continued. "It is a terrible thing to watch your loved ones die. Worse yet, I imagine, if yours is zhe hand zhat wields the knife. She and ma chére would both spare you that if zhey could."
"I am not a child to be coddled anymore," Alucard said through grit teeth. "She can't just send me away while she takes up a responsibility that should be ours. You said she only recently resolved to fight my father. How do I know she won't return to his side given the right incentive?"
Bernadotte wanted to argue that Seras was not so fickle as that, but he glanced at the equally stubborn faces of Alucard's companions and knew his errand would be in vain. Neither of them looked willing to back down, and neither of them had an obligation to Seras that would compel them to obey her. Then he looked at the old Belmont Estate and wondered what else Alucard had discovered within those toppled walls. He wasn't, as he'd said, a child to be coddled anymore, and between Lisa, Dracula, and Seras together, Bernadotte saw the young dhampir had been sheltered from the world and the vicious politics of his father's people long enough. Childhood innocence had been an irretrievable loss when his mother died.
A long, weary sigh made its way from the Librarian's lungs as he returned his attention to his friend. "You won't be persuaded, no matter what I say?"
Alucard's eyes hardened. "I will not."
Bernadotte nodded. "Then I suppose there is nothing more I can do." He clapped his hands over his knees, then rose from his seat with an inaudible groan. "Is there a message you'd like me to give to Seras?"
"Aside from, 'Fuck off, I'm fine?'" Alucard growled.
He smiled ruefully. "I'll just tell her you miss her."
"So say we are going to continue against Draculina's bidding," said Belnades. "Which if I am judging the characters of these two right, we are, how do we coordinate our attack?"
"Have you a distance mirror?"
Alucard shook his head. "Not that we've found, but there's a broken viewing mirror in the Hold. I could maybe modify it."
Bernadotte waved a dismissive hand. "Ah, old mirrors are finicky at best. Unless you're making repairs, altering their spellwork leaves them…temperamental."
"You say that as if they have personalities," Belnades said with a bemused smile.
"I once encountered a distance mirror that would not work unless you addressed it as 'Sir.' Dracula has one in his collection that only works when you pose your inquiry in rhyme and if your couplet is lazy, it ignores you. C'est très frustrant."
Belmont let out a sudden bark of laughter, startling all of them and they turned to the hunter in disbelief. "You say that's frustrating? There's one mirror mentioned in my mother's books that apparently responds only to dirty limericks."
A mortified look crossed the Speaker's face, and even Alucard and Bernadotte were at a loss for words. The Librarian found his first and, with a shake of his head, answered. "I'll return to Castle Dracula and give Seras your answer. Hopefully then, we can establish a method of communication and find a way to bring an end to zhis. Sound fair?" Except for the hunter, they nodded, and Bernadotte found himself grinning. "What a merry band we are turning out to be: a hunter, a Speaker magician, a dhampir, a very angry vampire princess, a librarian mage, a probably insane Viking, plus others. What could possibly go amiss?"
"How are you getting back to the castle?" Alucard asked, ignoring his question. "Surely you're not intending to walk all that way."
"Unless Dracula's Castle is closer than we imagined," said Belmont, earning an uncertain glance from his two companions.
"N'ayez pas peur. The castle currently lies in the Făgăraș Mountains, about midway between Brașov and Targoviste. And no," Bernadotte said as he removed a small strip of paper from one of his many cloak pockets. "I'm not walking back."
"Is that…?" Belnades leaned forward to examine the paper more closely. "That's a teleporting charm.
"Right you are, mademoiselle. More specifically, it's a Library Card, a handy charm of my own invention." Looking to Alucard, he added. "Take care. I hope to see you again soon."
The dhampir grinned. "You invented that charm? This is going to be really embarrassing for you if this doesn't work."
The Librarian ignored him and swung both arms upward, clapping the charm together between his hands. He didn't have to wait long for a cold blue fire to spread between his fingers. As the faces of the three travelers faded from view, he again felt a disconcerting loss of gravity as the spell altered space and time. Still, he thought with a shiver, the effects were nowhere near as acute as when he'd gone through the Mirror of Fate earlier. His landing was more elegant too. As the fire burned away, Bernadotte gave a satisfied smile when he saw the vaulted halls of the castle's archives.
Seras was no longer there, but he hadn't expected her to be. He had told her he'd be gone for an hour or so, so she probably had left to further their cause in other areas of import. Or, he thought as he turned to the clock above his writing desk, it was possible she was asleep. It was the middle of the day after all. The Librarian yawned. Maybe sleep wouldn't be a bad idea right now.
"Good morning, Master Bernadotte."
He froze, his heart stopping in his chest, and he slowly turned his head to face the monstrously tall man looming behind him.
"And where were you just now?" asked Dracula.
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Author's Notes: I love a good cliffhanger. For anyone who likes illustrations with fanfiction, I now have a deviantart page under the username TheMysticVixen, which features several drawings from both Honey and Vinegar, Court of Intrigue, and others. Stay safe, I hope you enjoy, and I will see you all in the next chapter.
I own neither of these series.