"Helpful hint: Beauty greatly alleviates boredom. Seek the finer things." from The Book of Blood, Teachings of the Ancient God
Dracula turned his hand this way and that, admiring the black sphere Death had crafted of Bat's soul.
"Beautiful," he commented, glancing up to meet Alucard's eyes. "But why do you want it? What use have you for this bauble?"
"She isn't a bauble!" Alucard cried out. "Don't...don't..."
Dracula waited patiently for Alucard to sort out his thoughts.
"Whatever you are going to do with her...Father, if there's any shred of compassion in you, make it quick. And don't hurt her," Alucard finally begged. Both of Dracula's eyebrows lifted at that.
"Really? What will you do for me in return?" Dracula asked playfully. "Any soul is unique, but hers especially so. She became a vampire bat in a decidedly unusual way! With her soul I could craft another Soul of Bat amulet like yours and give it to D. I sense I could make a relic from her soul that would allow someone to summon a hoard of bats to do their bidding. That would be quite useful! Both processes are quite painful, I regret to inform you. They destroy the mentality of the original creature. Bat, as you know her, would be well and truly gone if I were to use her soul in such a way. So what price are you willing to pay to entice me to give in to your request?"
Alucard remained silent, overwhelmed by the playfully callous attitude of his father toward the one...
...the one he admitted had come to mean so much to him.
"What have you to barter with, Alucard? You could let me raise Castlevania once without your interference. Or perhaps serve as my personal minion for a hundred years, say?" Dracula suggested.
The true horror was laid out before him. To save Bat's soul from the torment his father threatened, Alucard would have to abandon the people he cared for to his father's whims. Or worse yet, perhaps harm them directly as one of his father's many servants...or slaves. This was a situation that had no lesser evils to choose. Bat was only a single being, Alucard knew he should let his father do whatever he wanted to her, even if it meant she was agonizingly tortured before she was destroyed utterly.
It hadn't happened for well over a century. A tear trickled down Alucard's cheek.
"Anything," Alucard told his father. "I'll do anything you want...if you don't hurt her."
"Anything..." Dracula repeated, gazing into the distance just over Alucard's head with an expression of triumph. "Anything I want..."
He brought his gaze down and focused it on Alucard's tormented eyes.
"Then listen. Castlevania serves a purpose, which you have yet to comprehend. Each rising makes Castlevania stronger than the one before. You would never be able to beat Castlevania, or me, with just your own skills, as formidable as they are," Dracula told him.
"So from the beginning, five were chosen to aid you. They too grow stronger and learn more at each rising. Even as you do. Each time, you are just...strong...enough...to win."
Alucard wondered why Dracula was telling him this. Did Dracula want him to fight him in Castlevania or not?
"You must learn Castlevania's true purpose on your own, my boy. But to serve that purpose, I selected the five familiars who serve you. And when you bit Bat in your attempt to make her immortal, I helped to bring that about too. I could no more hurt her..." Dracula interrupted himself.
"I guess you could say I've adopted her. She is like a step-child to me," He admitted honestly.
"Yes, Alucard, you can have Bat back. I'm not going to harm her, no matter how many unique and powerful items I could make from her soul. There is a price you must pay for me to restore her, though. No matter what, no matter how reluctant you might be, you must truly fight against me when Castlevania rises. If you do not, I will be forced to kill you. If you lose, I will lay waste to the land around Castlevania and bring death and devastation to the humans who live there. When Castlevania rises, I am truly the demonic vampire lord of humans' worst nightmares and you are the only one who can protect them and defeat me."
"Bat herself must forfeit something too," Dracula continued softly, looking again at the globe of Bat's soul in his hand.
"Forfeit?" Alucard asked. He didn't want her to lose anything! What if Dracula demanded her immortality? Or took her Force of Echo voice away? She and Alucard wouldn't be able to speak with one another!
"Let's see what her most deeply held treasure is..." Dracula mused looking down at her soul. Pure white began to glow brightly from the center of the globe. He smiled rather gently. "Predictably, it's her love for you. Let's leave that strictly alone," he decided.
"What about her fondest, most secret wish..." The glow dimmed just a little. Dracula gazed into her globe, evidently directly reading her wish.
"Ah!" there was a note of satisfaction in his voice. "That will do nicely for a forfeit!"
"What?" Alucard demanded. "What are you going to do? Take her fondest wish away?"
Dracula looked up triumphantly into Alucard's eyes. His lips twisted into a cruel smile.
"This is such fun!" Dracula teased. "No, Alucard, Bat hopes you never find out about her secret wish. So that is her forfeit. I strip her protection away so that you can see it for yourself. Dealing with it is her forfeit, for the wish she would hide from you forever will now be revealed as I grant it!"
Dracula lifted her soul globe up dramatically. Alucard wondered if his father was going to smash it on the ground. Instead, Dracula brought it back down, wrapping his arms around it almost as if he were embracing Bat's soul. The globe broke, black shards sparkling as they scattered and disappeared. The soul that had been contained in that globe glowed a soft black. Dracula held Bat's soul within his arms as his power touched her and changed her.
Her soul writhed. Black, the same black as her wings, flowed down almost to the ground. Alucard stared, not comprehending what his eyes were seeing. Was her soul melting? There was white too. There wasn't anything white about Bat! And she seemed large, much larger than even her vampire bat form. Was Dracula somehow stretching her out of shape? What was happening? What horror was Dracula inflicting upon her?!
"There!" Dracula's voice was self-congratulatory.
A sound of pure loveliness erupted into the room. Entranced by it, Alucard at first didn't notice that it was actually the voice of a deeply-felt distress. The strange black shape in Dracula's arms made as if to burrow into Dracula's cloak to get away from Alucard.
"None of that, my dear!" Dracula remonstrated. Though she struggled to stay hidden, Dracula put both hands upon Bat's soul and pushed her away from him. "Your secret wish, the one you wanted most to hide from your Master Bat, is wrest from its hiding place in your heart! If you want to live again at Alucard's side, as his familiar, this is the price you must pay!"
The struggle ceased. There was something of a slumping motion that reminded Alucard of how Bat would huddle within her wings whenever she was sad. He longed to comfort her, to let her know no matter what her secret wish showed him, he'd never think worse of her for it. He realized that though he had discovered it himself, he had yet to tell Bat that he loved her. And not in the overly careful way he had told her once before, letting her know that he cared for her only because she was one of his familiars. Somehow he had completely fallen in love with her. He had yet to tell her that.
"Of course, if you'd prefer to stay with me the way you are now, I'd have no objections at all!" Dracula's voice had become a throaty purr.
A little white fist appeared from the blackness and smacked Dracula in the center of his chest. Dracula laughed. Alucard's eyes widened as he realized...
Bat's soul wore a human, female form. The blackness that had confused his eyes was the long ebony spill of her hair. The whiteness was the human skin she'd been given. This was her secret wish?!
Now that she was no longer struggling against him, Dracula turned her so Alucard could see her fully. Alucard sighed that true to his randy nature, Dracula had incarnated her naked. At least his father had given her the long waves of black hair falling to her knees to conceal her. Not that Bat seemed too concerned about concealing herself now that the heart of her wish was revealed...stripped bare, so to speak. Dracula had given her pure white, almost translucent skin to contrast with her dark hair. Alucard took a step nearer. Bat's eyes widened and her distress darkened their lovely purple hue, even as a red blush bloomed on her...well, everywhere.
"Lord Dracula!" Death shifted uncomfortably.
"Oh, you are such a prude!" Dracula exclaimed. "Honestly! Is this why you insist on burial shrouds and such?!" He opened the clasp, whirled his cloak off and placed it on Bat's narrow shoulders. Her hands came up instinctively to grasp and close the cloak around her.
The noises coming from her were the inarticulate ravings of a celeste. Obviously she was giving voice to her distress, but the sounds she made were so purely beautiful that Alucard found himself smiling.
"Oh, I had better take care of that!" Dracula started. He turned Bat around to face him, gazed compellingly into her eyes, tipped her unprotesting chin up with one finger and kissed...
...her forehead. He released his hypnotic compulsion and caught the little hand that reached out to strike him again.
"Only Master Bat!" her angelic tones said. "No one else should touch me! Oh?!" She started in surprise that she now had the power of human speech.
"Why?! Why did you do this to me?!" she demanded, looking up at Dracula as tears welled in her eyes.
"You got to see me as a bat, as I once promised you would," Dracula told her. "I wanted to see you as a dhampir. It is your secret wish after all, is it not? To be like you 'Master Bat' in his human form, just once? So I granted it. For the next twenty-four hours, you, my dear, are a dhampir just like him."
"It was my secret," Bat dropped her head, hiding her face in her long hair. "You never should have found it. You never should have made it true...in front of him. Now he will..." She slumped to the ground and huddled in Dracula's cloak as she once would have huddled in her wings.
"I can't even fly away. I feel so strange. My wish...is made a nightmare! Master Bat will...hate me now..."
Her words galvanized Alucard out of the spell that her lovely voice wove around him. How endearingly silly she was! Hate her?! That was the furthest thing from reality!
He knelt next to her and placed his arm around her shoulders. Her shoulders shook under him and Alucard realized that true to the human female form his father forced her to wear, she was crying in her distress. She'd been through so much! For her to think that he could ever hate her...she wasn't thinking clearly. How could he tell her...?
Alucard smiled to himself. He had a sudden, powerful image of Fairy floating before him, telling him that Bat didn't need words from him now. Fairy was actually floating several feet away, just as shocked at what had happened to Bat as he was, but Alucard thought it is something Fairy would tell him. He pulled Bat fully into his arms, cradled her against his chest and just let her cry. He held her and stroked through her silky hair. He crooned softly and squeezed her shoulders from time to time, showing her with his gentle touches and supportive presence that he could never hate her, no matter what. He saved his words for later, when she would be calm enough to hear them.
She cried herself out finally and sighed. Alucard smiled that she didn't try to leave his arms and stood up, bringing her with him.
Alucard stared at the beautiful dhampir his father had made of Bat to grant her secret wish. He knew he loved Bat. He admitted to himself that no matter how odd it seemed, he loved HER, not the form she was wearing. He pondered that perhaps he would fall in love with her even more, when she was in the vampire bat form that was natural to her now. He felt weak in the knees that she would be, had been, returned to him. His father had told him the price to bring that miracle about was that Alucard would have to fight him still in Castlevania.
It was an odd forfeit to demand, though Alucard felt he understood Dracula better than ever before. He wondered if, when the time came, he could bring himself to fight his father. Strange that he learned more about Dracula because of his familiar. And there was Bat's forfeit too...Alucard vowed silently to make sure her forfeit wasn't a bad thing at all!
"I'll tell you now what I discovered, when I thought I had lost you," Alucard began in a soft voice, releasing the words he longed to utter now that she was receptive to them. She snuggled and nestled against him willingly, instinctively, just as she had done when she was still just a mortal natural bat and he told her to trust him for the first time. She might be wearing the form of a dhampir, but she still was, and would always be, his beloved Bat. "I regret that the first time I tell you this, it is not to you in your own form, in the language that we share."
"But I promise tomorrow I will tell this to you again." Bat locked her gaze on Alucard's eyes, paying rapt attention to his words.
He'd never been more aware of his own heartbeat or the blood rushing through him. Even the bloodlust didn't make him feel this powerfully alive. One part of his mind realized this might be why Dracula had loved so many women and sired so many children. True love as a antidote to the bloodlust? Or, not quite an antidote, perhaps just something more powerful to help keep it at bay. Alucard had learned as he followed eeD through the dimensions, that once Dracula had found a wife, he lived quietly and calmly with her until something riled up the people around him. Alucard wondered what would happen if Dracula were allowed to love a woman in peace. But...
Her! The soft lavender eyes gazing so ardently up at him. He could see Bat's own bright and curious nature in their sparkle. The way she loved him, the way she trusted him, the way...
...the way she was pressing herself so tightly against him! She was probably frightened, but the way she felt in his arms... Maybe it was wrong of him to consider it, but Dracula said she would be this way, a dhampir like him, for only twenty-four hours, that tomorrow she would become again the vampire bat she truly was. Tender feelings might fill his heart, powerful feelings might surge in his blood, but a different feeling surging in a different place insistently demanded release. Maybe it was wrong of him to consider it. She wouldn't understand. He set his will and pushed the feeling away. He'd never distress Bat with things she couldn't understand!
Alucard was sure Bat would understand his other feeling though. She'd already shown him in thousands of ways how she felt about him. He never thought he'd ever return the emotion shining so brightly in her eyes. He'd set his will against ever feeling it, toward anyone. For some reason, toward her, that will had proven too weak to resist. Alucard was glad for that fact.
"I wish I could say your true name to you now. You will have to wait to hear me say this the way I wish I could. But I can deny it no longer. Bat...I love you."
She blinked up at him at that. Her lovely purple eyes widened in shock. She stopped breathing while she stared at his eyes, struggling to assimilate all that he had just told her in those last three simple words. Her wish didn't disgust him?! He did...did he just say...did he actually mean...?
Bat smiled. Not a smile of triumph, just a smile of simple pleasure, as if everything had finally fallen into place.
"I'll get to say it to you in your own language first!" she smiled luminously, yet impishly, up at him. "Master Bat, I love you."
He laughed, as she intended, that she had used her name for him, rather than the name he asked her to use. The little minx! She knew how important true names were! Would he never hear those wonderful words coupled, made one with his name in one breath as he wished they could couple, making his body one with hers?
...! Oh, yes. That was definitely the desire talking!
She twisted in his arms pressing so close that Alucard wondered if perhaps she was trying to embrace his backbone. The heavy lock of shiny black hair along her cheek shifted and slid off her shoulder, baring her neck and clavicle to his avid gaze. She pressed her shoulder and chest against his, mutely letting him feel the heat that simply being held by him sparked in her.
"Alucard." Just that. Just his name. Her beautiful voice put all of her longing into the syllables of his name.
"Tonight is short. We will have this chance, to share our love, just once." She stepped out of his embrace, tipped her head back and dropped her hold on Dracula's cloak, inviting Alucard to gaze upon her, instinctively knowing that it would ignite him. She looked upon him with the simple, innocent directness of the animal nature she had been born with. Her gaze was hungry and hot as she raked it from his feet, up over the breeches that hid none of his interest in her, over his arms, chest, shoulders and into his face. Her naked desire darkened her eyes, but under and through all the wild animal attraction, he could see she still felt the soft, unbreakable ardor that meant this night, if they did indeed consummate the desire they both shared, was actually a sacred meeting of two hearts, creating a single love.
"Alucard," this time, her voice was the essence of adoring softness. "I love you."
Should he? Would it be right for him to take the advantage Dracula so blatantly, obviously wanted him to take with Bat? Would it break his vow? Had he broken his vow already by telling her that he loved her? Desire, honor, vows, true love, sacred trust...all of it, all the forces that made up his being whirled about restlessly in him. What should he do?!
All of a sudden, a passage in the book D had loaned him rose to the surface of his mind.
"We are but transient visitors poised on the edge of darkness. Claim your happiness whenever you find it. As the humans say, 'Seize the day.' You never know when an opportunity will be presented just once."
"...just once..." Alucard said it aloud, looking into Dracula's eyes. Dracula nodded solemnly. "Seize the day!" Alucard told himself firmly. Dracula's eyes widened in surprise, before he smiled in understanding.
"Bat...sweetheart..." Alucard turned to look down at her again, wondering how to ask her for permission to do what he longed to do. She pulled him down and herself up enough to seize the moment herself and give him the sweetest, yet most carnal kiss.
"Enough talk!" she demanded as she released him. "Time is so short!" She pressed herself into his side again. "Won't you make me yours? Or do you not love me enough?"
Alucard laughed in surprise. "I'll show you just how much I love you!" he threatened playfully.
"Lord Dracula..." Death pleaded. "Not here! I couldn't take it!"
Dracula waved his hand and Alucard, with Bat still held in his arms and plastered to his side, disappeared.
"To spare you, old friend!"
"You've sent them...where?" Fairy finally dared to approach.
"Oh! I should have sent you with!" Dracula realized.
Fairy shook her head emphatically. "No! I have no need to witness what they are doing!" Dracula laughed.
"I sent them to one of the places I like to take the women I love the best. It's...appropriate for how they were behaving!"
"As for you," Dracula cupped his chin. His eyes sparkled at Fairy. Though he had been so benevolent toward her friend Bat, Fairy found herself fearing the Lord of All Vampires again.
"Good! You should fear me!" Dracula told her. "When Castlevania rises, I will indeed try to kill your master. Remember that, and make certain he does too!" Dracula warned her. "But for now, so you keep that fear intact, I think it best that you not be around me too much. Familiarity breeds contempt, after all."
Dracula waved his hand again. Fairy disappeared.
"You sent her back to the familiars' dimension?" Death guessed.
"No. I sent her to trouble D for a bit. She teases him unmercifully!"
Death laughed. "Good! Anything you can do to make him uncomfortable!"
"You're still upset at him about that tooth of yours?!" Dracula demanded, stooping to retrieve his cloak from where it had been abandoned by Bat.
Death growled.
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