FINISHED! I am now officially finished! I'm considering writing a sequel, just because they're so cool. I wrote a summary teh bottom, so let me know if i should write it or not. I'd also like to thank RandomBattlecry, MariAmber, and Becca the Giggler for asking me to continue. Savitri has yet to review, so I'm assuming that there's nothing to critize in the last chapter.
Answers to Becca's questions: Alright, Ashian is dead. She's a vampire for pity's sake! If you mean as in never going to come back, well, I like her too much. PLus, she if dies, I can't write a sequel. Why isn't Dracula her father? I figured that i couldn't pull that off with a plausable explanation (if you'd seen teh movie, you'd know why!) besides, it just seemed too Star Wars.
Dracula: Ashian, I am your father.
Ashian: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
See what I mean?
Last chapter, and plenty sappy, too. But if you think this stuff is bad, go watch the last five minutes of Wizard of Oz. This can't possiblely be that awful. (Savitri, you review and say it is I'll burnyour Pirates of teh Carribeanan DVD and then I'll get your Orli Poster.HAHAHAHAH!)
One more reason I love you
"Van Helsing, wake up." Carl poked Van Helsing with fire poker. He knew from experience it was smartest to be at least three feet away from the monster hunter when you woke him.
"Damnit, Carl! I wasn't asleep!" Van Helsing batted the fire poker away. But he had been asleep; a point Carl chose not to bring up for the sake of his own well being. Ever since the night Ashian had fought with Dracula, Van Helsing had done nothing but pace the room where she lay and sit by her bedside occasionally. It had been three days now, and other than the fact that she would scream sporadically in her sleep, there was no sign that she was alive. Or, at least as alive as a vampire could get.
"Of course. While you weren't sleeping I cabled that Madame Frescona you met in the port, as well as the Gabriella Ashian lives with." Carl used the fire poker to stir up the dying fire. His attempts were thwarted by the log collapsing.
"How did you know where to cable her?" Van Helsing ran his hand through his hair and shook the sleep from his eyes.
"Which her?" Carl tossed the fire poker aside. "That Gabriella was particularly easy to find seeing as she lives Ashian. Madame Frescona actually cabled me asking if we'd managed to kill Dracula."
"Oh." Van Helsing hadn't been one for conversation the past three days.
"Anyway, like I was saying, I cabled both of them, and through some sort of ungodly talent they are both waiting outside. I told them it was best if I woke you first." Carl walked over to the door of the room and let Gabriella in as well as a young woman. It took Van Helsing several moments to realize that Madame Frescona was a shape shifter as well. Her hair was dark brown and braided down her spine. She wore a loose linen dress and a large vest that swept down to the floor. A dark mist followed her with glowing yellow eyes, and if one concentrated hard enough, you could see a vague outline of what had a head, shoulders, arms, and a long tail. A Demonic familiar, assumed Van Helsing.
"Demonic yes, familiar no. He was my fiancé at one point, but that was before Dracula decided to experiment on him." She bent over the dying fire, gave it a hearty glare and grinned when it burst into flame. She was powerful. "Yes, arts taught to me by my mother. They're quite useful, no?"
Van Helsing was startled by Gabriella throwing the curtains open. The evening sunlight struck Ashian's pale figure full in the face. Gabriella tossed the sheets back as if it were an average day in her Paris town home. "Wake up, you slug! The sun's almost set!" Ashian moaned, a painful noise that made Van Helsing flinch. He wanted to knock Gabriella across the room and snap the curtains shut, but Madame Frescona held him back with an outstretched arm.
Gabriella helped Ashian to sit, a sign she did realize they were in Valerious Castle and not Paris. Ashian shuttered several times and opened her mouth as if to moan again. But instead, as Carl put it later, she began spewing viscous substances. Really, it was a disgusting mixture of bile and blood. And it was all over Gabriella's lap.
Totally ignoring Ashian's upheaval, she wrapped her friend in a crushing bear hug. "Oh, if you didn't have me so damn worried I'd slap you." Ashian moaned again, and it almost sounded like "get off me" but was somewhat more muffled by Gabriella. Eventually Madame Frescona ushered Carl and Van Helsing out of the room and pried Gabriella off Ashian. With a final tear she left Madame Frescona and Ashian to be.
It was several more hours before Madame Frescona left the room and left the door open. She and Carl departed to speak in the library, leaving Van Helsing and Gabriella to vie for the door. Van Helsing sprinted across the room and slammed the door before the shape shifter could get in.
"You seem worried." Madame Frescona had helped Ashian wash and change, and she was now sitting cross legged on the bed with her sketch book in her lap.
Van Helsing's shoulders sagged when Ashian spoke. Trying to remain calm, he pulled a chair from the fire and sat across from her. "You have no idea." They sat in companionable silence for several minutes, Ashian's pencil scratching softly. Van Helsing began again, "What were you and Madame Frescona talking about?"
"Just things I need to know about being immortal, about being a vampire, and oh, she mentioned that I have now taken Dracula's place as the single most powerful vampire on this planet." She continued sketching, but smiled at Van Helsing's shocked silence.
When he did speak it was at first somewhat incoherent but eventually formed to: "YOU'RE THE MOST POWERFUL VAMPIRE IN THE WORLD?!" He buried his face in his hands.
Ashian set sketch pad away and put a hand on Van Helsing's shoulder. "I promise, I won't be near as … as evil as Dracula. Gabriel," She pulled his head upward to look at her. "Don't you get it? We'll always be together now. Not to be sappy, but isn't that good?" Ashian was hurt by Van Helsing's lack of excitement.
Van Helsing looked at her incredulously. "No! It's awful! I work for the Vatican, remember? They're going to want you dead! It was possible to get around that when you were a normal vampire, but the Princess of Darkness? There is no possible way for us to be together!"
"Oh hang the damn Holy Order! Who cares a damn what they say or do? You are the left hand of God! You shouldn't take orders from anyone! Burn the Vatican for all I care!" She fought back tears and when she spoke again, her voice wasn't icy or flat, but for perhaps the first time since meeting Gabriel Van Helsing, it was thick with emotion. "Look me in the eye and tell me you don't love me."
Van Helsing paused, not wanting to go on. But he did, though it hurt him. He looked Ashian in the eye and said, "I don't love you."
Ashian blinked past the tears. "Liar." She stood, and so did Van Helsing, watching in pain as she took several feeble steps. She hadn't passed him when she collapsed. Instinctively he caught her and helped her stand to her full height. He tried to ignore how right it felt, but couldn't. This time it was Ashian who started the kiss, and he didn't fight it.
He was, however the one who broke it. She confidently sat back on the bed, all sign of weak knees gone. "You filthy little vixen." He half heartedly chastised her.
"Now tell me you don't love me." She raised her eyebrows, knowing she had him caught.
Van Helsing chuckled and kissed her again. This time they fell back wards until they were lying side by side across the four-poster. "There, happy?"
"Very." Ashian put her head on his shoulders and let him sleep in peace for the first time in twenty years.
"So, how exactly did Dracula die?" Carl asked Madame Frescona. He watched in fascination as the demon, now identified as Hugh, bustled about setting tea on in the kitchen.
They had intended to go to the library, but Thomas Elkins dog, which had heretofore remained hidden, had attacked them. Madame Frescona told Hugh to meet them in the kitchen. Carl wasn't sure what happened, but when Hugh came back, he seemed exceptionally pleased with himself and there was a bit of laughter shining in his yellow eyes. Carl assumed that the yappy little dog (the collar branded it as Elizabeth) would never be seen again.
"I told Mr. Van Helsing that Dracula's only weakness was emotion. I thought that to kill him, one had to make him feel something other than hate for once. But instead, it was Ashian's emotion that killed him." Madame Frescona took the teacup Hugh handed her as she spoke.
"How does – I mean did that work? Thank you." Carl took the teacup offered him by the phantom.
"Well, when a vampire feeds, it is not actually the blood that is their main need. Yes, it nourishes them, but what keeps them alive is the life force of the victim. They take on whatever the person being fed on is feeling. Most often, when Dracula fed, his victims were either brain-dead from fear or filled with hatred for him. When he fed on Ashian she had enough presence of mind to remember her life. Whatever emotion welled up in her transferred to him, and in turn reached his heart. The afore mentioned heart was so cold and numb from four hundred years of hate that the emotion he received from Ashian set his heart on fire, hence the spectacular inferno." She turned to Hugh, "Could I get some sugar, darling?"
"How would you know that?" Carl had yet to touch his tea; he was so enthralled with the new information.
"I had Hugh trail Dracula. Thank you, dearest." Madame Frescona took the offered sugar bowl from Hugh. "But I still I wonder what emotion it was that Ashian felt." Madame Frescona stirred her tea halfheartedly.
"Love. I think it was love." Carl murmured and then said to Madame Frescona, "It was love that killed him."
Madame Frescona quirked her mouth and though about. She was about o say something, but Gabriella walked in. "It was love alright. Have you seen the two of them upstairs? They look like doves in spring." Carl choked on his tea. The mental image of a dove with Van Helsing's coat and hat was rather amusing.
Ashian nodded to no one in particular as the silver screen went black and credits for "Van Helsing" began to run. Most of the people began to file out, but Ashian stayed through the credits. It was odd how that Hugh Jackman person looked so similar to Van Helsing.
Of course, the real Van Helsing was much better looking. For one, his hair wasn't that long anymore, he had long since lost the hat and replaced the coat, and now had three fresh long scars lacing down his back. Come to think of it, she looked different too. Her hair was now about six inches long, and she didn't dress so conspicuously. Sure, she still wore trench coats everywhere, and at night she donned an old silk top hat, and… Okay, maybe she did dress conspicuously. Carl was still with them (he'd discovered the elixir of life) and the only difference in his appearance was that he no longer wore skirts.
"Robes. For the last time, Damnit, they were robes." And that, he'd learned mind reading from Madame Frescona.
"You cursed! Not very well, mind you, but you're a monk. You shouldn't curse at all." Ashian lowered her voice and wagged her finger, purposely quoting the movie.
"Actually, I stopped being a monk one hundred and fifty six years ago, so I can curse all I want. Damnit." Carl shot back.
"Whatever." Ashian steered Carl out of the movie theater. They walked in silence back to the Manhattan apartment that Ashian, Carl and Van Helsing shared. Van Helsing had left a note on the table, but as soon as Carl picked it up to read it the monster hunter burst through the door. Well, not burst, he wasn't allowed to burst through doorways anymore; the landlord hated it. Rather he stalked through and collapsed on the sofa.
"Well, did you two enjoy your day off?" Van Helsing said as he pulled his grimy t-shirt off and threw it in a heap left for housekeeping.
"I personally, would have rather been with you, no sentimentality meant. I knew everything that happened; I don't see why Carl made me go." Ashian rummaged in the fridge and pulled out three Pepsis. She tossed two to Carl who then tossed one to Van Helsing.
"Well, the whole thing was your project, it seemed only right that you see the final outcome." Carl waited several seconds before popping his soda lid. He had discovered a way to keep sodas from bursting by calculating air travel and pressure.
"Was it as good as you said it should be?" For months now Ashian had been manipulating minds and resources to get the movie made right, and for just as long, it had been to only thing she could talk about.
"Yeah, but the werewolves looked fake." Ashian sat on the back of the couch and rubbed Van Helsing's shoulders.
"Did that Hugh-what's-his-face do a good job?" Van Helsing leaned gratefully into the massage.
"For the most part. Poor man can't cry, though. Ashian was googling at him through out the entire movie." Carl sipped his Pepsi to hide a smirk.
"Was not!" Ashian said defensively.
"Bet you were." Van Helsing opened his own soda.
Ashian's only response was to pour her beverage on his head. "Go take a shower."
Van Helsing stood after her and wrapped her tight. Carl moaned and left for his bedroom/laboratory. And not a moment too soon; Van Helsing kissed Ashian. The kiss was broken by Carl shouting from his room, "Are you two done with your snog-fest?"
Ashian licked the Pepsi off her lips and whispered to Van Helsing as she fingered the three long scars lacing up his back, "Have you ever figured out how you got these?"
"No, nor do I care." Van Helsing kissed her lightly and left for the bathroom. "Alright, Carl, snog-fest over."
Seqeul or no sequel? Summary below!
Fallen: Gabriel Van Helsing's life is as close to perfect as it has ever been. Living with his best friend and love intrest by day and hunting evil freelance by night. What could be better? But not long ago he woke in his bed to find it blood soaked, and the only sign of harm done was three interlacing cuts windingdown his back. Six months later, Ashian begins to have dreams again, dreams of what could be and what will be. A ghostly specter haunts Carl's laboratory. And now, Van Helsing is visted by a little girl clutching his old crusifix. Every night she asks teh same question: "Gabriel, why have you fallen?"
It's placed right after where this story leaves off, once again begining with Ashian's dream. This was just a pelmel idea and i have yet to decide teh out come and plot the major battles and so forth. I think i might concentrait on improving my X-men fanfic.
REVIEWS OR NO SEQUEL!