YEAH!!!!!! reviews make me HAPPY : ) Keep em' coming. Oh, I've reread a bunch of the stuff I've already posted, and sorry 'bout all the grammar and spelling mistakes. Now, although ya can't see it, I'm down on my knees begging you for reviews. PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

'Kay, I'm back in the chair.

Madame Frescona

"Gabriel. Oh, Gabriel." Van Helsing pressed against whatever was behind him. It was warm, soft, and shorter than he was, but no matter how safe it made him feel, it couldn't block out Dracula's singsong voice. But soon, his vision came back and the voice faded into an awful scream. But something wasn't right. Colors seemed duller and details stood out in sharper contrast. His mouth was wet with blood, but there was something odd about that to. It tasted wrong. Van Helsing had tasted his own blood on many occasions, usually during fights. And the last time he had kissed Ashian; there had been blood in both their mouths then. But this was different. Sharper, bitter, and it rang in his mouth with an almost evil feeling.

Oh no.

He looked down. The soft thing he had pressed himself closer to was Anna's dead body. Her glassy eyes staring at him, asking why. He couldn't take it; not again. Just when he felt he would explode from grief, the body changed. It became taller, more streamlined, the hair straitened, and the outfit became all black with awful gashes and rents in the fabric. Blood still flowed freely from the wounds. It was Ashian.

Van Helsing clamored to stop the bleeding, save her in anyway possible, but as he feverishly worked he realized she had no pulse, and breath had not moved her body in a deadly long time. She was dead. In all likely hood, it was probably him who had been her undoing; again. Why did his loved ones always die? What was this curse that God had bestowed on his left hand? It was not fair. Overcome with grief, Van Helsing clutched Ashian's dead body to him, oblivious to the blood on her. Pressing her as close as he could, he buried his face in her wet hair and cried. Not the long sobs that had wracked his body when Anna died, but soft cries and fresh tears that left him feeling hollow of all emotion. Soon, crying to Ashian's limp corpse, he was sixteen again. Ashian hadn't known it, but as he was trapped in a young body, all the insecurities had come too. And they were back. He wanted more than anything to feel someone else embrace him, listen to his complaints, and be strong when he felt weak. Ashian had done that for him, but now he was alone; again.

Van Helsing shot up in the small cot that had come with the cabin. Above him Carl snored loud enough to wake the dead, and across the room Ashian was tossing in a nightmare of her own. What tormented her? She had no memories of awful battles past, or images of loved ones lying dead in her arms. She had always been able to cast away any memories that had troubled her. What was left to haunt her nightly visions?

Van Helsing cut off his musings; they never led to any good. Instead he splashed his face with a bowl of cold water and began to wring out his long, damp hair. He jumped when Ashian sat bolt upright in her bed.

"No! I'm not going to wear that bloody dress, you freak!" Ashian's eyes roamed the dark cabin unseeing.

Van Helsing chuckled under his breath at Ashian's antics. He remembered how much she had hated wearing dresses at school and wasn't surprised to learn that she was still traumatized by Mistress Haung stuffing her gangly figure in to a corset. "Relax Ashian; no one is going to make you wear a dress."

"Thank the lord! What an awful nightmare! First, I was being chased around London by Dracula, and then it became the Magellan Co-ed. Next thing I knew, Haung was trying to stuff me back into that repulsive school uniform." Ashian sat herself against the wall and watched Van Helsing dig around in a pile of luggage for his shirt. "Where did you get that?"

Van Helsing looked up from his search when Ashian spoke again. "Pardon?"

"That scar; it looks like you got bitten. Bitten by something big." Ashian was staring at the large white scar that wrapped around his chest.

Van Helsing finally found his shirt and hastily put it on. He wasn't fond of his daily reminder about his trip to Transylvania two years ago. He muttered, "Werewolf bit me a couple of years ago."

"What happened?!" Ashian smacked her head on the low ceiling on her bunk.

"A werewolf bit me. But the antidote was gotten into me before I could do extensive damage." Van Helsing had hoped that she wouldn't find out about his hour of desperation last time he was in Dracula's territory.

"Hold on, extensive damage? As in you did damage but it wasn't extensive? Who'd you kill?" Ashian rapidly pulled her boots on and she was dressed. She didn't believe in nightgowns or night clothes at all.

"I killed Anna Valerious, alright?" Van Helsing swung his coat on and stormed out of the ship's small cabin.

Carl finally woke with a start. "What happened?" But he was speaking to no one in particular; Ashian had grabbed Van Helsing's hat and followed him out onto the deck.

Ashian looked up and down the deck of the boat. Sailors scurried around in the rigging as they made ready to go to shore. Van Helsing was leaning against the railing looking out at the Romanian shore. His brown hair was whipping in the sea breeze as he stared mournfully to the port. Ashian came and stood next to him, playing with the contours of his hat where he would be able to grab it when he wanted it. Eventually his gaze rested on her weathered hands feeling his hat over. So many scars, so many hardships, and she was hardly a tenth of his minimum age.

"I'm sorry." Ashian's voice broke the silence. "I shouldn't have pried."

"You would have anyway." Van Helsing took his hat back and began to run his own hands over it.

"Yeah, your right. But even if I hadn't, you would have told me eventually." Ashian ran her hand through her hair when Van Helsing didn't respond. Instead of waiting for a reply that wouldn't come, she began again. "You're not the only one with secrets, you know. Did you know I spent four years in China?"

"No; I didn't."

"Well, I can certainly say I did my fair share of damage there. Killed a fair amount of innocents on accident as well." Ashian looked up to see how Van Helsing would respond.

"Why are you telling me this, Ashian?" There was a clammed up sort of feel to Van Helsing's words.

"Just thought you ought to know. And to let you know that you're not the only one with a guilt ridden conscious. We're very similar, Van Helsing. But you know the difference between us? Murder has completely killed my regard for human life. We have the same purpose in the end, but you do it to save strangers."

Van Helsing finally put his hat on. "Oh? And why do this task no one has assigned you? What ties you to this ungratified job?"

Ashian smiled at his questions. "To protect what little evil hasn't taken away from me. There is precious few that can't be taken away from me, and to hear of someone robbing themselves is awful. This Anna Valerious, she was obviously very dear to you, and to hear that you were her undoing scares me. Not because I know you could very easily kill me as well, but because I can with sparse difficulty see myself doing the same thing to you. I thought I lost you once, I don't want to do it again." Ashian let the words sit for awhile and then left to go see about breakfast.

Van Helsing called after her without turning. "Ashian Adelaide Valcon, you surprise me. Thank you." Ashian grinned and continued down the steps.

Several hours and many more badly bruised sailors later, Van Helsing and Co. were on shore. Ashian went into a shop to see about a silver knife that was advertised as being able to extend to three feet in length, while Carl went off to inquire about available lodgings in the next town they were to stop in. Van Helsing was alone, and when he was done buying three of the fastest horses available, he had about an hour to spend as he saw fit. He didn't usually find time for himself, but with an extra person on the team, things were easier. What should he do? There was bar, but he wasn't really in a mood to get drunk. Perhaps he should see what the weaponry shop had available? No, he had enough armaments to equip a small army.

Looking around at the town he saw a small hut with dark curtains over all the windows except one. The only uncovered transom was filled by the face of an old woman watching him. Over the door read an old and battered sign that read: "Madame Frescona: Reader of Palms, Prophesier of Futures, and Mender of –" The last word was unclear, smudged over by bird droppings and dark mud. Intrigued, Van Helsing went to go check the store out.

Van Helsing entered the small hut and was overcome with the desire to retch. The small building reeked of burnt garlic and musty decay. The entire place felt as if he was the only person short of Madame Frescona to ever set foot in the room for a decade.

"It has been twelve years, actually, Mr. Van Helsing. So why do you enter my domain? You are unaccustomed to free time, and you felt no desire to get drunk or arm yourself even further. But I know the reason, even if you do not. You are unnerved by how different your friend has become. She was once an innocent young child who thought that gargoyles were just stone statues, but because you taught her to fight, she is now a ruthless murder with no guidelines or sense of when to stop for her greatest profit. All she knows is that the world is evil, and she must fight that evil by any means possible. And she is right. If it were not for the sparse few who protect this world, Ashian would be no more than a pretty pet to be bought and sold by vampires, and other, darker things." Madame Frescona sat in the darkest corner of the room, and Van Helsing could see only her eyes in the smoky darkness.

"How did you - When did you - What is going on here?" Van Helsing's hand flew to his twin pistols, but he began to wonder if a silver stake would do more damage to the old crone.

"I beg your pardon! I am most certainly not an old crone! As for that silly silver stake, I suggest you put it away whilst you still have a choice in the matter. As for your question, I do believe that you are in my house without an invitation, so you are not in any position to ask questions. However, to keep you from losing your temper twice in one day, I will permit you one question, or I will continue to psycho-analyze your mind."

Van Helsing lowered his silver stake somewhat reluctantly as he pondered which question to ask. She could somehow hear his thoughts, and that alone was unnerving, but there was no need to ask her to explain that. No, he'd ask her about the sign. "Your sign says that you are the mender of something. What do you mend?"

"Ah, that is a very wise question. Has anyone ever told you that you have a considerable amount of dumb luck? Well, you do. As to what I mend, it isn't anything ordinary, which you have probably guessed. No, I mend minds. It is a very long and difficult process, but I do it when it must be done. You have probably already noticed by now, but I can read a mind like the daily post. Yours, oh left hand of God, is no different. The mind is like a complex whorl with many underlying levels and hidden passages, and when the pattern is thrown array by some evil thing, it is my job the shape it, form it back into its original shape."

"You can fix minds." Van Helsing lowered himself into a vacant chair. The statement had been more to himself than to anyone else. "Can you fix my mind?"

Madame Frescona chortled at his question. "I was wondering when you would get to that. No, Gabriel, I can't fix your mind, because nothing is wrong with it. Yes, you have no memory of who you once were, but that is a part of the pattern that has not been damaged, but rather, locked away from you. You must find the key, Gabriel, and it is near to you already. Very near, but you are steadily pushing it away. Be cautious of who you keep distanced, because as of late you have blundered all of your opportunities to bring back your past."

Van Helsing slumped in his small chair, unable to decipher the riddle. Finally he said, "Well, it is going to have wait."

"Ah yes, Count Vladislaus Dracula has returned again. Well, that would actually be the incorrect term, because he never really left. His brides did, however, and it is completely beyond me how he resurrected them. I believe he also gained two additionally brides over the past two years; Xiomara and Sonwaja. Xiomara has been done away with, indeed it was Ashian who struck the final blow, was it not? You had best beware this new one, Sonwaja. I hear she has quite the temper."

Van Helsing interrupted while she stopped for breath. "What do you mean he never left?"

Madame Frescona looked rather indignant at the question. "Why, just what I said. He never left. What made you think that a werewolf could kill him? Another vampire, yes, but him? No, his only weakness is emotion, and he has none. The vampire that you killed was merely an imposter. When he appeared to shift to his demon form, he was actually replacing his body with some other leech to get you off his back. Now, I do believe that our visit has come to an end, and your companions are beginning to look for you. Oh, and don't let my words distract you. Just do what you feel is right." With that Van Helsing felt himself being pushed out of the small hut by an invisible force. He landed on his hands and knees, and when he looked back at the hut, it was gone.

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