Disclaimer: The characters and concepts in this story pertaining to the movie Van Helsing are the property of Stephen Sommers. This is an amateur effort with no intention of infringement of copyright policies. This story is for entertainment purposes only.


Chapter 10: Secrets

Mina started to awaken as Gabriel yanked her from the room, scooping her up in his arms temporarily before swinging down and into the front yard. This action did nothing for her pounding temples and throbbing skull. She reached up for her head and groaned loudly as Gabriel set her feet down and the three sauntered into the darkness. She could barely keep up and was forced to concentrate on moving. Her thought process was hurting, something that never happened unless she was over consumed with her work. Carl gestured for a darkened alley and Gabriel pulled her inside. She pulled her arm from his shoulders and gripped her head in pain, wincing slightly as she felt the bruise already begin to swell.

But Gabriel ignored this, already angry that he knew so little about his new 'old' friend. He couldn't remember their time together, and he wasn't sure he wanted to know, but Morgan's statement about her scars caused him to pin her against the brick wall on the right, his hand at her throat while Mina reached up and snatched his wrists in her hands, yanking them from her throat.
"Excuse me!" She said, a little too loudly since Carl peaked out of the alley and shushed them before he saw what Gabriel was doing.

"Van Helsing?" He asked fearfully, confused by what he saw. One moment Mina was a trusted ally who deserved to be invited in on their mission to kill Morgan le Faye. Now she had been reduced to possible spy and threat to the mission. He stopped short and watched Gabriel lean closer to Mina.

"What did she mean?" He growled at her. "What are you not telling us?"
"I'm on your side." Mina managed, her eyes rolling up into her skull as black spots danced in her vision. Gabriel's hand threatened to tighten. She flexed her neck muscles, her hands still on his wrist.

"Morgan seemed like she knew you."

"In a way, she does."

Gabriel waited a moment before tightening his hand. He waited with her choking under his fingers, straining to breathe, before he felt something familiar rising up from inside her. He loosened his fingers and pulled down the high neck of the dress, Mina still pressed against the wall. At the last moment she frantically tried to stop him, but he discovered what she did not tell him at her home. He found two scars the size of sharp canine teeth on her jugular vein, ones that were trademark to only vampires. Carl's mouth opened and his eyes widening as he dug through his robes and snatched out a stake he always carried with him, tossing it to Gabriel. The sharpened end shot out in front of Mina's face, her eyes widening in fear momentarily before relaxing. He pressed it against the corset on her chest, above her heart.

"Give me a reason why I shouldn't do it." He told her. Mina coughed hard, breathing deeply. The stake cut into the fabric of her coat and she could feel it pushing in on her breast bone, so close to her still heart. She breathed heavily.

"I can control it." She told him. "I synthesized a substitute for human blood out of salt and iron." Gabriel's eyes narrowed. He'd heard stories of the Vatican scientists trying to create such a chemical, one that could humanize vampires somewhat. "It keeps me sane, even when I truly crave the taste of a human. It also slows my transformation time so that I can stop it if need be."

He noticed that the feelings of evil he felt coming from her a moment ago were subsiding and disappearing as her breath slowed. His hand stayed at her neck and the stake was still at her heart despite her assurances that she was safe. Mina closed her eyes and continued, sighing deeply.

"I'm hunting Morgan because her blood can cure me." She said, causing their eyes to look back at her. "Only the blood of the Queen of the Fey can cure almost any known sickness or condition."

"There's no proof of that." Gabriel said.

"Oh yes there is. Where do you think Dracula got his cure for a werewolf bite?" She asked him.

Gabriel had a momentary feeling of regret. He remembered the red liquid inside the needle in his abdomen as Anna pushed in the plunger. He remembered (vaguely) the smell of blood in the air that was not Anna's or Dracula's.

And he remembered the feelings of power that came with it.

"Morgan's blood is the only thing that can completely destroy a vampire's bite." Mina was silent for a moment, her head facing slightly upwards and away from his hand. "That was why I was hunting her."

Gabriel hesitated a moment, torn over what to do. It was his duty to kill vampires. It was a job requirement and a mandatory duty of a member of the Knight of the Holy Order to kill off anything that was remotely evil.

But evil didn't seem to have a hold on Mina at all. He could only sense it when she was being threatened, and even then it was being held back by her iron will.

"If you want to kill me do it. I won't fight back." Mina said. She didn't close her eyes or tense up and the sound of her inhaling and exhaling could be used to keep rhythm to a piano. She was unafraid of her fate, knowing it came with being a creature of the undead.

But Gabriel didn't stab her with the stake. He retracted the sharpened end back into the handle and tossed it back to Carl who continued to stare, saying Gabriel's last name again. Mina felt his hand leave her throat and she lifted herself from the wall, standing up straight again before coughing loudly. The sounds of Scotland Yard were heard down the street, and several officers were catching up with them.

"What's our plan?" Carl asked quickly. Gabriel was looking up and into the night sky, the clouds covering nearly the whole city and blocking out the stairs. He looked at the rooftops, the high edges easy to dig his grappling gun into. Mina looked around the corner. She saw at least four coming down the street with lanterns.

"I have an idea." She said quickly. Gabriel and Carl glanced over at her. She sniffled a little and started breathing heavily, her eyes brimming with tears before she pushed Gabriel back and into the other wall and screamed, running out of the alley.

"Well that was just a little strange." Carl said.

Mina ran straight to the officers, pointing and shouting for them. Their lights fell upon her, the neck of her dress pulled down and her eyes filled with tears.

"HELP ME!" She shouted. "HELP ME PLEASE! Two men in there just tried to rape me!"


Gabriel was wishing he had simply staked her and avoided that little scene with the authorities, but there was nothing he could do at the time being. Already the officers were trying to console a shrieking Mina who was speaking too quickly to be understood very well. He reached for his pistol as the officer stepped around the corner and held out his own.

"Drop the weapons Van Helsing." He said quickly, his face and body hidden by the shadows cast by the light. Gabriel still heard Mina out in the street, sobbing uncontrollably. He un-cocked his weapon and dropped it to the ground, hearing Carl do the same with the silver stake. Two others appeared, shouting down the street for reinforcements as they had just captured the legendary Van Helsing.

Carl was taking his time as he emptied out his robe. His mission in Transylvania taught him one thing: He should always be prepared for something. His sleeves were packed with everything from stakes to extra bullets to small orbs of gas that burned or froze when shattered. The officers were watching with bored stares, their pistols slowly dropping down.

There was the flutter of wings moving quickly towards them, and before the men could stop them they were struck with an onslaught of small bats that pummeled them to the ground. The other officers who were running down the street stopped, watching the scene with widened eyes. The bats pushed the three officers into the air and threw them at least ten feet before they slid to a stop, each knocked out cold for the time being.

The bats spiraled around the entrance to the alley for a moment, each landing on top of the other as they took the shape once more of Mina's skirt and coat. Her shadow grew at last until it was completed, her body back to normal once again.

"I'm a murderer and a rapist now?" He asked her.

"I was improvising, Mr. Van Helsing. I didn't exactly have time to concoct a more believable story."

She looked at the officers at the end of the street, eyeing them carefully.

"Can we leave now?" Carl asked. Gabriel picked up his pistol. He was about to take off running when he noticed that Carl was not. The friar was busy picking up everything he had deposited on the ground when they were at gun point. Gabriel went back for him.

"Come along Carl." He said, dragging his friend out into the poorly illuminated street and into the darkness ahead. The officers behind them shouted, but they were already gone by the time they thought about what the authorities were truly saying.


Morgan's window opened and she stood on the floor, clutching the blade in her hand lovingly, her eyes closed in happiness. She opened them and looked at the final sword, the only thing she needed to complete her spell. Her servants were laughing with her, their shrill voices whispering compliments and praises for her work. They were telling her she was a great sorceress and an asset to the Goddess herself. This made Morgan smile, thanking the Goddess for her patience and her gifts that were bestowed upon her, and drew the blade from the sheath.

She was to meet with a brilliant white glow of the Excalibur's power, just as she had met with the others. She thought she was hallucinating when she saw that the sword produced no glow. It was just a sword.

She had no time to check for the piece inside Harold's home. She had killed him prior to Van Helsing's obnoxious interference and had no time to look that she had grabbed the correct blade. Morgan slid the blade back in the sheath and yanked it free once more, meeting the same image as before.

The blade was a normal blade. It was not the blade that held the piece of Excalibur's sheath.

Morgan stared at it for an eternity before she tightened her grip on the hilt. The blade crumbled to ash and flew to the ground. The hilt melted in her fingers and hit the ground as a clump of molten steel. She could have sworn she had felt the power of Excalibur near her when she had held the blade. How could Harold have tricked her like that? She was the monarch of Magick, the Goddess's favourite out of she and her idiot sister Morgause. She had plotted the demise of Camelot and her lover Accolon, manipulating him as cruelly as she had once been. She had slept with Arthur and carried the child that would bring the Kingdom to its knees. She had killed Merlin and taken his power. And she had written the spell that would bring the dead back from the grave.

And she had lost the last piece of Excalibur within the home of Harold Walker.

She looked out the window as the rain began. The storm that struck London that night would live in infamy. It was the worst storm that would ever loom over England.


Gabriel could not rest easy the rest of that night. He was inside Mina's house, listening to the rain come down hard against the windows. He could hear Carl breathing deeply on the other couch near him, curled under the blankets he had brought from the Vatican. The lightning flashed and crackled and the thunder boomed but it wasn't the whether that kept him awake. It was the feelings of uneasiness that came from knowing and confirming that Mina was a vampire.

He watched her go upstairs, dropping her coat over the banister and leaving silently. There was a deep feeling of shame in the way she moved. Perhaps it was returning to the second level of her house that made her so angry, walking as if she were walking back into a time when Gabriel was not there and her husband was. He looked over at Carl who was sleeping with a stake that night. Gabriel just slept with his gun slipped under the firm pillow under his head.

At first sleep would have seemed easy for him. His chest was healing but slowly, and he had hardly given it any time to finally get better. He found that the stitches were starting to rip from either side of the open flap of skin. He eased himself back on the couch and closed his eyes, but sleep didn't come to him, and he knew it most likely would not.

He played a game with himself instead, struggling to remember why he trusted Mina as he did. It was unconscious trust and blind faith. He knew in his heart she didn't want to hurt him, even though she was herself a creature he had sworn to hate and kill. But he couldn't stab her tonight. He found his arm locked up with the feeling off her breathing and her chest under the sharpened object. He never admitted it to Carl, but he hadn't granted her the mercy of life because she could control the transformations. He had granted her mercy because in some lifetime he knew her and somehow cared for her.

Gabriel heard the stairs creak and the sound of a match being lit and extinguished with a strong breath. He looked up and past the arm rest at his feet as Mina came down the stairs, her face pale and covered in sweat, sparkling in the lamp light. He closed his eyes just enough to pretend he was asleep, but slid his hand slowly to the pistol under his pillow just in case.

She neared the foot of the couch, eyeing them carefully as she leaned forward and inspected that they were asleep. Mina breathed deeply, sighing as she took an extra long look at Gabriel, still in Jonathan's shirt while his chest rose and fell slowly.

For a moment Gabriel thought she was planning something, but he watched her leave soon after and go past the stairs to the rest of the rooms in the small but cozy home. He quietly sat up, looking after her, the light of the oil lamp shining out into the hall. He got to his feet, the floor creaking so suddenly that he dropped back onto the couch once again, afraid she heard him. He finally got up again, sure that she wasn't coming back to check on him, and walked around to the kitchen.

Mina was standing next to the ice box, holding an Erlenmeyer flask in her hand. Inside was a red liquid, much to the equivalent of blood, but it was much more thick and syrupy. She didn't notice him, and pulled out of the cork of the bottle and placed it to her lips, beginning to drink it down.

He watched her swallow hungrily, needing the taste of the blood in her mouth as if it were air itself. Her eyes opened and stared at the liquid coming down her throat, tears welling up at the edges of her eyes and dripping down her cheeks. Gabriel stepped back and into the darkness again but his eyes were stuck on her. He was entranced somehow by her desperation, her need, but the betrayal in his eyes astonished him. They were saddened by her requirement for blood.

She pulled the flask down and breathed heavily, small traces of the liquid running down from her lips. She wiped them away with her sleeve, turning back to the ice box and corking the bottle before putting it back inside. It took her a moment to realize she was being watched, her eyes opening and her pupils constricting as she turned back to find him half hidden in the door. Mina closed the ice box.

"I suppose you want to kill me now." She said, wiping her mouth again as she turned. The white robe she wore spun around her feet and she kicked it to straighten it out.

"I can't." He said, stepping into the kitchen slowly. "I can only kill the wicked, and you are not wicked."

"You don't know what I am." She said. "You only know that I am a vampire, but you do not truly know who I am."

"I can sense evil." He said quickly, cutting straight to the point. "And I can sense no evil from you." He stopped by the stove, crossing his arms. His point had been made. Mina closed her eyes and wiped away the sweat and tears. She took a moment more to fully come back to her senses.

"I was intrigued by you, Mr. Van Helsing." She admitted. "And I do not simply mean when Morgan first attacked you. I mean before that. Before you lost everything."

Gabriel shifted uncomfortably. He held himself still though, allowing her to say what she wanted.

"When we first met I confided in you a secret about my husband that I was not even ready to admit to myself." She began, her mind taking her back to moments when she could remember and he could not. "I thought he was insane, the way he wrote in his journal about everything that had befallen him when he was meeting with the Count."

Gabriel's heart skipped a beat. She knew about Dracula?

Mina could read the question in his stare, and she nodded.

"Count Vladislaus Dracula." She said, her mouth curving awkwardly around the words. Her British accent could not fully pronounce the Transylvanian name without sounding rather odd. "He took the life of my friend, Lucy."

Lucy? He knew that name. He knew he did. It was at the tip of his mind, telling him something that he couldn't recall. It called him back to somewhere, an undisclosed location.

Wait, it was a grave. He was pulled back to a graveyard where a woman in white walked between the trees at sunset, carrying infants in her arms to her crypt where she drained them of blood completely.

"Do you remember?" She asked him. Gabriel looked at her. He closed his eyes.

"I remember chasing a woman in a graveyard." He said. The colour seemed to return to Mina's cheeks a little.

"You remember hunting Lucy." She said.

He remembered her telling him how she had thought her husband may be insane. He told her she was wrong.

"Your husband's name was Jonathan?" He asked. She nodded. "Jonathan Harker." He repeated for his own reference. His voice became softer and gentler.

"How did he die, Mina?" He asked her.

She inhaled deeply; her eyes were half closed. Gabriel thought at first she wasn't going to answer but she finally did.

"He was killed by a vampire who once worked for Dracula." She said. "The same vampire who killed him left me damned for eternity."


Author's Notes: I enjoyed writing this chapter mainly because of Mina's outburst to get them away from the Scotland Yard. Her ability to turn into a flock of bats was from the movie The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, an interesting twist on her character that I thought was actually quite cool.

At the end, Mina mentions that Jonathan was killed by a different vampire and she too was bitten by this different vampire. I did this for two reasons: 1) I have not read Dracula, but I'm pretty sure at the end of the book they destroy the Count. Anyone who has read Dracula could comment on this. I'm not trying to make assumptions. 2) The movie mentions how anything created by Dracula will be destroyed when Dracula is destroyed. If Mina was bitten by Dracula and Jonathan was killed by him, it would mean that when Gabriel killed Dracula she too would have either reverted back to human form or died. If I've made too many assumptions, I apologize that this story is not quite what the original novel is. It's a little AU from the movie as well, and you'll be able to tell that with later posts.

My biggest fear is getting characters OOC. I hate it when other Fanfiction authors do it and do not wish to fall into the trap. I tried to give enough reason at the end for Gabriel's 'sparing' of Mina, but no one's perfect. If any of this seems wrong or against Hugh Jackman's character please say so and give comments on how I could have done it differently. THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR READING THROUGH THE LENGTHLY AUTHOR'S NOTE!

Reviews

J: I appreciate your nitpicking and would never discourage you from it. I avoided putting Mr. in front of Van Helsing (when Carl's speaking anyways. Mina still calls him as such) and am very grateful for the help!

Fanfiction Fanatic: Thank you very much! Exams aren't going to be pretty, but I like coming back to my computer and I literally cannot wait to continue this story! It's become one of my favourites! It's actually taking the place of my original fiction, but it could never go that far. I think I'm going to give up on the X-Files story for now. Hugh Jackman has won me over entirely. I'm enjoying this story much more than the other. Thanks again!

Summer Knight: Thanks for the information! I have actually read a bit of The Lord of the Vampires by an author whose name I can't remember. In it was the true story of Count Vlad Tsepesh with diary entries of Abraham as his wife slipped into insanity. I didn't know he had a son though. I think I'm going to incorporate that into the rest of the story. Thank you!

PS: Don't ever think I'd flame you for a review! Unless you flamed me I don't think I'd lose my temper that easily!

Saerry Snape: It's a relief to hear that I'm not doing too much damage to Bram Stoker's story. I know a few things about it (mainly from seeing movies like Dracula: Dead and Loving It) but I did pick up a copy of the book just in case. You really should read the Graphic Novel of the League. It was better than the movie, although could you really hate a movie with Shane West in it? I think not.

Oh, and on a final note, thanks for saying my story's great. It makes my day!

HyperCaz: I'm a pretty violent reader. I liked making her fingers fly off too.

Eponine: Wow. The best Van Helsing story? That's saying too much. But thank you very much. I'm glad that you're enjoying it. And I'm glad I got Carl. It ticks me off to read a lot of other Van Helsing Fanfiction and all he's good for is a laugh, using the same jokes he used from the movie. There's more to Carl than that! He's also intelligent and he's an inventor. He is a great character and knowing that I've characterized him properly is great. Thank you!

Scholar: Carl is my favourite character, without a doubt. He was just too funny at times (especially when he was showing Gabriel around the Vatican). Could you imagine Jinette finding out about the barmaid? (LMAO!) That is an awesome idea! Thank you!

Grissom: That's the one thing I hate about my computer with its Auto-Correction. If I spell a word wrong it doesn't fix it grammatically no matter what buttons I press! Silly technology! Anyways, I like nitpicky reviewers, unless they just go over the top (which you didn't). I completely agree with your points about the 'Anna's not dead thing.' The first time someone did it the idea was interesting. And then twenty other writers started writing about it too. I felt like one of the only people who felt like Anna should have died! I didn't even like Kate Beckinsale that much in the movie! Slash is just a fact of this website. If you look at Lord of the Rings there is an Aragorn and Legolas slash every twenty or so stories. I don't hate homosexuals but I think they made it pretty clear that Gabriel is a heterosexual. He didn't hold Carl back. He grabbed for Anna. I also agree with your point about our generation of writers. A lot of teenagers I know are addicted to the whole 'Love at first sight' philosophy. That's another thing I dislike about a lot of these stories. I tried to keep his relationship with Anna out of the range of love because I didn't think it was love. I thought it was just an interest that Gabriel felt comfortable in. I'm trying to move things slow with him and Mina because it would be very OOC to have them grabbing each other immediately.

THANK YOU TO EVERYONE WHO REVIEWED! YOUR COMMENTS MAKE MY DAY BRIGHTER AND MY FINGERS FASTER AT GETTING CHAPTERS UP!