Tears rolled down Anna and Gabriel's faces furiously. Anna sobbed loudly and as hard as she could to release the pain, but with every sob it only buried itself deeper into her aching heart. Even from a distance, she had seen the terrified look on her daughter's little face. Gabriel was holding Anna half to comfort her, and half to keep his legs from failing him. Carl was sitting on the dining table looking at the wall in complete disbelief. No one had spoken now for about ten minutes. It was eventually Anna, still weeping, who broke the painful silence.

"Why is God punishing us, Gabriel?" She said, stopping to choke out a sob before he could answer her. "What did we do wrong?" Her head lifted from his chest to see his face, she ignored the fact that they were not alone in the room. Usually when she did cry in front of others, which was extremely rare, she would keep her face buried away so no one could see her tears. Carl, personally, had never seen her cry, and the amount of tears that flowered from her glistening eyes shocked him.

"I don't know, baby." He whispered. "I'm sorry, I don't know." He was lost, and Anna was right, surely they were being punished for something. They had raised their children to respect the Lord, to understand the difference between right and wrong, where had they gone wrong?

"I should show you what I found in the library." Carl said to them, now guilty he hadn't told them earlier.

In the library, there was a book lying open on the desk, where he had been studying it before he too had heard Dracula's enraged roar and looked from his window to see Kate being dangled from a great height. Anna sat opposite Carl at the desk and Gabriel stood behind her, his hands on her shoulders comfortingly.

"I was searching the moment you left for another way to kill Dracula without having to change into a werewolf, and I found this. It was a new book I picked up in London a while ago." He showed the passage to the couple. Gabriel read it aloud.

"When Dracula first made his deal with the Devil, there was only one thing that could harm him: the blood of an angel. Valerious the Elder, the first ancestor to try to destroy the demon, coincidently his son, was aided by the help of a stranger claiming to be the left-hand of God himself. Together, the pair managed to banish Dracula to a castle far away in the middle of the Transylvanian Alps, hundreds of miles away from anything. But he returned to seek his revenge on the Valerious family, which brought about the claim to Gad made by Valerious the Elder, that his family to come would not rest in heaven until Dracula was destroyed. Time passed, and eventually only one Valerious remained, Princess Anna. A few days after the taking of her brother into the werewolf form, Transylvania was unwillingly welcoming Gabriel Van Helsing into its midst. Together the pair fought and killed Dracula, his brides, and his thousands of children he was trying to create life within. Today, Gabriel Van Helsing and Anna Valerious are married with four children, still residing in Anna's family home of Vaseria." Gabriel sighed and took a deep breath before continuing. "Their second-born child, daughter Katie Grace, since she was a small child, has depicted the living form of the guardian Angel of God himself. The angel bloodline of her father, mixed with the Valerious bloodline, has managed to create what experts say will be the strongest weapon against Dracula, should he ever return. Only her blood, once spilled, will be useless against him, thus giving him another chance to create a third age of darkness. However should she succeed in getting near enough to him, spilling a drop of her blood onto his sword and striking him in the heart with it will truly destroy him for all of time."

Anna and Gabriel looked at each other in shock. Now they knew. Anna took the book from him, at first she had only been half listening, but when the writer had written about her, she started to listen attentively. There was a picture covering half of the page with two tall figures and a smaller one between them. They were humans. One was male, with dark hair, dressing in black, one was a female also with dark hair but dressing in a red, and the smaller one was dressed in white, with shining blonde hair and blue eyes. Anna didn't need to guess who they were.

"Gabriel it's us with Katie." She said quietly. Gabriel looked over her shoulder at the picture. The witch had been right. It was up to Katie now, all they could do, was give her a chance to fulfil her destiny before it was too late.

Katie's P.O.V

Time passed slowly. We started to sleep during the day; afraid to be asleep when Dracula was awake. After the incident, Scott and me were forced to tell the twins about Dracula, who he was, and why we mattered to him. Every time we awoke, we rushed to the window to see if Momma and Daddy were riding on their great horses to rescue us. But every day we didn't see them. We forced ourselves to believe they were coming, but in the end it was no use. When November came, we began to give up hope. Dracula's son, apparently unscathed our presence, brought us food and milk every day to keep us from passing away.

The room turned icy cold with the fast approaching winter. Our teeth chattered, our noses ran, we sneezed often. One day, a woman with a think Romanian accent like our mothers brought us long heavy underwear to wear underneath our clothes.

In the room we barely had room to walk without colliding into something to bruise our shins. Sometimes we fought, sometimes we cried, but most of the time we just relished the fact that we were still alive, and even if we were alone, we were alone together. The twins developed a passion for hide-and-seek in the room full of trunks and furniture. I remembered playing it with them in the courtyard the morning we were taken.

But in this particular game, Alex had easily one. Scott had easily found Serena, and me but Alex was still unfound an hour later. His normal way to choose his hiding place was the last place Scott or me had hidden in the last game. So it was our belief we would go straight to the third massive armoire and there would be Alex, crouched In the bottom hiding under the old clothes and grinning up at us. We indulged him, avoiding that particular wardrobe for a specific length of time. Then we decided to 'find him'

But he wasn't there.

"Well I'll be damned." Exclaimed Scott. "He's finally found a better hiding place than all of us in this damn room."

I swiped at my leaky nose and then took another look around. If truly innovative, there were a million good hiding places in this room. Why, it might take hours and hours to find him, and I was cold, tired and miserable, sick of playing this game that Scott insisted we play daily to keep us active.

"Alex!" I yelled. "Come out form wherever you are! You won." Nothing. No answer, no movement, only silence.

Suddenly I was scared. I couldn't believe that Alex had overcome his fear of the immense shadowy room and was at last taking this game seriously. "Scott," I cried. "We've got to find him, and fast."

He caught on to my panic and whirled into a run, crying out Alex's name, ordering to come out, stop hiding. Both of us ran and hunted while Serena watched. I was nearly freezing because of fear, despite my clothes, eve my hands weren't working properly.

"Oh God." Murmured Scott, pulling up short. "Suppose he hid in one of the trunks, and the lid came down and accidentally latched?"

Alex would suffocate! He'd die!

Like crazy we ran and looked, throwing open all the lids of every trunk. We tossed out the contents all with insane, distressed terror. And while we did this, I prayed to God with all my heart and strength not to let Alex die.

"Kate I've found him!" shouted Scott. I spun round to see Scot lifting Alex's small inert form from a trunk that had latched and kept him inside. Weak with relief, I stumbled over and kissed Alex's small, pale face, turned a funny colour from lack of air. His slitted eyes were unfocused. He was very nearly unconscious. "Momma," he whispered, "I want my Momma"

But Momma wasn't here. There was only a small clan of vampires and I certainly didn't know what to do in an emergency. Luckily, Scott did from all his studying.

"Run that tub with hot water, but not too hot. We don't want to scald him." Then he was racing with Alex in his arms towards the tub.

I reached it first. I glanced backwards to see Scott lay Alex down on the bed. Then he bent above, held Alex's nostrils, and then Scott lowered his head until his mouth covered Alex's blue lips, which were spread apart. My heart jumped, was he dead? Had he stopped breathing?

Serena took one glance at what was going on – her small twin blue and not moving – and began to scream.

Near the tub I turned on both faucets as far as they would go; full blast they gushed. Alex was going to die! Always, since out capture, I was dreaming of death and dying...and most of my dreams came fatefully true. And as always, just when I thought God had turned his back on us, and didn't care, I whirled around to grab hold of my faith, and prayed, demanding Him not to let Alex die.

Maybe my desperate prayers did as much to help my brother as whatever Scott had done.

"He's breathing again." Said Scott, pale faced and trembling as he carried Alex to the tub. "Now all we have to do is warm him up." In no time at all we had Alex undressed and in the tub of warm water.

"Momma," Alex whispered as he came to, "I want Momma." Over and over again he kept saying it, and I could have pounded my fists through the walls it was so damn unfair! He should have his mother, not just a pretend mother that didn't know what to do. I wanted out of this. I wanted Momma and Dad. I wanted home.

But Momma wasn't here. Just us. Ii said in a calm way that made Scott look up at me and smile with approval. "Alex, Momma isn't here. But I'll do everything for you that she would. I'll hold you on my lap, and rock you to sleep while I sing you a lullaby, just as soon as you eat some food and have some milk."

Both Scott and I were kneeling as I said this he was massaging Alex's small feet, while I rubbed his cold hands and made them warm again. When his flesh was coloured normally again, we dried Alex off, put him back in all of his clothes, and wrapped him securely in one of the pathetic excuses for blankets we had been given. I sat against the wall opposite the window and cuddled my sweet younger brother on my lap. I covered his face with kisses and whispered sweet nothing in his ear that made him giggle.

If he could laugh, he could eat, and so I fed him tiny bits of lukewarm soup, and long drinks of milk. As I did this I grew older. Ten years I aged in ten minutes. I glanced at Scott and realised that he, too, had changed. Now we knew there was real danger in this attic besides Dracula and his family. We all faced threats much worse than the mice and spiders that insisted on living, despite all Scott did to kill every last one, to prevent them scaring the twins.

I rocked on and on, holding Alex in my lap, with an arm around Serena at my side. "Katie," Said Alex in a small whisper while Serena nodded off into sleep. "I don't like not being with Momma and Daddy."

"They'll come get us Alex, I promise."

"Are you really as good as Momma?"

"Not completely, but I love you very much, and I think that brings me very close"

Alex stared up at me with wide brown eyes, to see if I was sincere or only mocking his need. Then his small arms crept around my neck, and he cuddled his head on my shoulder. "I'm sleepy, but don't stop singing Katie"

I was still singing softly when Scott came to sit with us. He sat beside Serena and lifted her onto his lap, listening to the childish tune I was singing to no one but myself. He put his arm around me too, so he held us all close to him, practically on his lap.

Daddy used to do that. He'd hold all of us on his lap, even Momma sometimes as well as us. His arms had been long enough, and strong enough to embrace us all and give us the nicest, warmest feeling of security and love. I wondered if Scott, looking and resembling Daddy so much, could do the same.

An eerie feeling passed over me, like the bad feeling I got the night before we left for the Vatican. Scott and I looked like doll parents, younger, slightly less wise versions of our parents.

"The bible says there is a time for everything," whispered Scott, so not to wake the twins. "A time to be born, a time to plant, a time to harvest, and time to die, and so on. This is our time to sacrifice. Later on will come our time to live and enjoy."

I turned my head and nestled it down on his boyish shoulder, grateful he was always so optimistic, always so cheerful, even under darkened, hopeless skies. It felt good to have his strong young arms about me – almost as good and protective as Daddy's were. He was right as well. Our happy time would come, when we left this room and went home to our parents.