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Chapter 74
Breathing hard Marston watched Anna turn and walk towards the mantle, his heart beat was loud in his ears as he heard the echoing screams of Dracula and Sarah as they shared Aleera's final agony.
"That's how they die?" he asked Anna hesitantly.
She stiffened slightly but continued her climb upon the huge mantle to grasp the ancient sword.
Still panting Marston stepped around the dust pile and bent to retrieve the partially melted silver crucifix from where he had flung it, amazed that such a simple thing had probably just saved his life and caused the end of Aleera's.
Anna regarded him with sympathy when she approached with the sword firmly in hand, the bronze hilt tingling in her palm as if it anticipated what was to come of it.
Marston raised his head and met her gaze across the room, his face paled when he saw the sword.
He gestured towards Aleera's remains. "When you kill Dracula…that…that'll happen to Sarah?" Anna nodded.
Marston closed his eyes for a moment. In his mind he was back in the manor, not a day before all this, where he had spoken to Sarah for the last time.
He saw her troubled gaze as she stared into the fire and it hit him, that even then she had decided her own fate, that she was planning to end her life that very morning…he'd seen the warning signs but had brushed them easily aside, telling himself that she was just depressed, that she had a lot to think about… that the sadness and regret in her eyes would fade away.
Her smile never reached her eyes that night, nor for many nights before it. She had wanted to die rather than become the creature inside her, there would be no cure to the vampire curse no matter how much he, or the rest of Sarah's friends might wish it existed. As painful as it would be to lose her, he would honour her final wish.
Taking a calming breath he opened his eyes and faced the princess. His expression was hard and determined, the cold set of his jaw twisted into a smile that didn't reach his eyes.
"Go kick his ass." He told her.
Anna gave him the briefest of pitying glances before she sprinted from the room…Van Helsing had come for her so many times…now it was her turn to come for him.
Sarah screamed in agony as she felt Aleera's death, flailing blindly she staggered away from Chris who sagged in terror and relief.
It took him a few seconds to realize what had just happened and with her screams still echoing around the room, he leapt to his feet nervously rubbing his throat and shaking off the dizziness from his head wound.
Amie appeared beside him trembling, her face deathly pale.
Together they watched as Sarah disappeared into the rafters above their heads.
"This is a good thing right?" he asked breathlessly as Amie took her chance to relight one of the fallen torches and retrieve her fallen sword.
"I'm really hoping so." She answered.
Bob jumped sharply as demonic screams echoed throughout the castle. "What the fuck?"
At his feet Victor Frankenstein froze, his back ridged, his hands ceased their frantic clawing at his hair.
Victor blinked in confusion as the fog around his mind lifted, he knew who he was.
Dracula's face, so constant in his mind became distorted. The friendly smile he had always perceived there took on the true form of the hateful sneer. The warmth in the counts eyes became icy and cold, the kind words dripped sarcasm and mockery, and then the face itself became less human.
The teeth grew monstrously long, reaching for his flesh.
After over a year under the devil's thrall, Victor Frankenstein had woken up.
He stood tentatively giving Bob and Carl the tiniest of glances as he looked around and saw the laboratory as if for the first time. It looked more like a rank dungeon than a laboratory, his machines like rusted torture devices clawing at the crumbling walls.
"Oh god what have I done?" he whispered in horror.
Turning, he focused on the bewildered men behind him. "Dracula did this too me…I've lost everything…my Elisabeth left me." He struggled with his tattered coat pulling out a dusty photograph and passed it to Carl who took it rather bewildered.
A beautiful lady laughed back at him, her head tilted slightly away to catch the afternoon sun through the large windows at her back.
"Oh…er she's very nice?" he said lamely handing back the photo and ignoring Bob's impatient glare.
"She left me!! She knew that he was a monster!!" The doctor cried in anguish.
Without warning he rushed at Bob and wrenched his shot gun from its holster. He began to fanatically blow apart the machinery surrounding them, piece by piece.
Bob watched in horror as the Doctors fevered gaze fell upon the portal against the wall, staring at the world beyond as though it was the most disgusting thing he had ever encountered in his strange and lonely life. With a wild yell he levelled the gun and forced a shell into place, ready to fire at the offending object.
"No!" Bob yelled jumping into front of the portal archway. "No you can't that's the only way we can get home!"
Doctor Frankenstein had worked himself into frenzy by now and he pushed the desperate boy to one side. Bob's injured leg twisted in a pot hole and he tumbled to the floor, he struggled to get up with Carl's help.
"Maybe it's for the best!" the friar reasoned trying to hold him back as Victor raised the gun and aimed it at the top of the arch.
Bob pulled against him. "No Carl if there's one thing worse than dying here its having to live here!" he cried pulling free finally.
The boy dove for the doctor just as he pulled the trigger, they tumbled to the floor and Bob ripped the shot gun from his grasp, sending it flying to the back of the devastated lab. He turned and looked towards the archway.
A pile of rubble lay where it had been, the bullet had rocketed up to the roof, collapsing the section and completely destroying it. He rounded on the doctor who lay smiling at his feet.
"We needed that! We're stuck here now!" he yelled pulling him to his feet and pushing off Carl, as the friar tried to hold him back.
Victor smiled "Dracula had his own purpose for it…I have just saved your world." He said confidently.
Bob glared at him "No you've just destroyed seven lives!" he spat.
Carl put a hand on his shoulder, "Six" he whispered softly.
Bob's stance softened as he blinked, Victor regarded him with sympathy. "Dracula's new bride…was your friend?" he asked.
Bob let him go without comment, turning he retrieved his sword and walk determinedly from the lab.
"Where are you going?" asked Carl.
"To join the real battle." came the cold answer.
Carl looked nervously at Victor. "He's right I have to go… will you be alright."
Victor nodded a satisfied smile on his face. "Destroy Dracula, I will destroy this lab."
Carl nodded and as he turned to leave, found a leather bound journal being forced into his hands.
"Maybe this will do as much good in your hands as it did evil in mine." whispered the doctor.
Dracula flew out of range to rest momentarily upon the high ceiling of the ballroom; his hollow demon eyes regarded the distant hunter with malice.
Van Helsing returned his gaze. Exhausted and bleeding he still stood defiant against his former comrade, a man whom he had loved as a brother and murdered as an enemy.
Strange that history should choose to repeat itself.
The momentary pause in the fighting was interrupted when Anna burst through the heavy oaken doors.
A sudden flash of lightening shone off the ancient blade in her hand making her sudden entrance all the more dramatic.
Sprinting she reached Van Helsing's side, glancing up at the demonic figure of Dracula with hatred before turning to the man beside her.
"You're late." Van Helsing commented gruffly, struggling to breathe through damaged ribs.
She smiled slightly moving into his warm embrace. "He's weakened?" she asked quietly, her breath warm on his throat.
Van Helsing glanced again at the now human Dracula leering at them from the rafters and nodded.
"If he wasn't we'd be dead already." He pointed out, a small smile briefly crossing his bruised lips.
She returned it with one of her own before fixing his eyes with a questioning stare.
"Are you ready for this?" she whispered raising the sword slightly so its tip rested sharply against his body.
The hunter nodded grimly "Make it quick." He ordered stealing himself for the bite of cold steel, and the flow of blood that would end the life of Vladislaus Dragulia.
By unspoken agreement the Amie, Chirs, Tony and the newly conscious Jory, formed a defensive circle. Their backs to each other, they stood in the small circle of light provided by the single torch.
They watched the shadows shifting in silence, ears straining for any tiny sound that might betray the bride's location.
Amie didn't know what came first, the searing pain of claws in her shoulder or the screams of her friends as they were sent sprawling once again into the hard floor.
Sarah hung upside down in front of her, seemingly fascinated by Amie as she struggled in her grasp. The vampire frowned as image raced across her mind.
She saw herself talking with this girl beside a fire…laughing with her…protecting her and hiding with her from a prowling werewolf. A strange feeling of de'ja vu settled around her and she leapt to the floor, dropping the startled.
Amie lay dazed on the cold stone, her head facing Chris's unconscious form as the vampire loomed above her. She blinked in confusion as someone leapt into the room and cold blood of the vampire filled the air.
When the fog in her brain lifted, she raised her head to see Marston standing over her, his hand out stretched towards Sarah, and a partially melted crucifix clutched tightly between his fingers.
She tried to hide her disappointment that Bob wasn't with him and scrambled back against the wall to where Jory was struggling with his freshly bleeding wrist.
Marston stood panting, out of the corner of his eye he saw Amie scramble to safety and faced the vampiress in front of him.
"Ok Sarah, now I just got Aleera with this thing, don't think I won't do the same to you…don't make me."
Sarah grinned at him taking a step forwards.
"Sorry, I don't believe in your god." She said patiently.
Marston smiled back confidently "Maybe not, but he believes in you!" he yelled pressing the silver cross into her face.
Immediately the flesh started to sizzle and she screamed raging blindly as Aleera had done.
Marston's guilt was short lived as she hurled him from her; he slid painfully on to his back to land beside Tony who was climbing painfully to his feet.
"Ah crap, De'ja vu!" he hissed clamping a hand to the re-opened bite on his arm.
Tony glanced around at his friends, each either unconscious or distracted by injuries. His gaze met Sarah's as she approached intent on finally finishing at least one of the teens off while they lay helpless.
A memory tugged at his mind: a small lost voice standing alone in the middle of a storm… "Are you afraid of me Tony?" she'd asked him. There was no sign of the lost little girl he'd comforted that night in the vampire before him.
"You have me, Jory, Bob, Marston, Amie, Chris, Carl, Anna, and most of all Van Helsing, we are not going anywhere ok? We won't let you face this alone"
He'd promised her that… and he'd failed her…and she'd become the creature before him…the creature that would kill him.
Slowly he got to his feet and faced his friend.