Title: Green-Eyed Monster

Author: Alexis (Alli Kat)

Rating: PG-13

Disclaimer: Van Helsing characters from the movie/book are not mine; characters you don't recognize are from my imagination unless otherwise specified. I write to distract myself from graduate study, not for profit. So don't sue me! I own nothing but textbooks, anyways.

Summary: Van Helsing and Carl travel to the United States to investigate a string of violent, mysterious deaths. As usual, things are much worse than they first believed. Can they stop evil from being unleashed in northern California? Sorry, no slash!

A.N.: This is my first fan fiction based on a movie. I usually write mysteries, so I apologize in advance if this story takes on a "who-dunnit" feel.

Because the movie did not use subtitles, I'm not going to either. Hopefully the story is written in such a way that readers can get the meaning of any foreign phrases.

Reviews are very, very welcome! No flames, please.

For Grandma J.

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- PROLOGUE -

San Francisco, California, 1888

Two hours ago, when he first heard the scratching sound, Father Carlos Maretti dismissed it, attributing the disruptions to rats and mice playing in the attic.

An hour ago, he had believed it was just the solitude and the late hour that were playing tricks on the mind of an old man.

Just now, as the sound had progressed from a faint scratching to the sound of distinct footsteps, he was convinced there was someone or something out in the corridor.

Perhaps it was only a curious seminary student or novitiate.

Father Maretti could remember what it was like to be a novice with an inquisitive mind. He had traveled to Rome from his home in Venice many years ago as a newly ordained priest, young and full of enthusiasm for his work. His gift was languages and, for fifty years, he had spent his time translating ancient tomes in a lonely section of the Vatican archives. And for those fifty years, the solitude did not bother him.

Until recently.

He was nearly finished with the translation of one text in particular and, the more he neared the end of the text, the more he wished he had never begun in the first place.

This, Maretti realized, was when every bump in the night began to bother him. In fact, he seriously began to question whether or not he was going insane.

His fellow priests and brothers in Rome had thought it best if he spent some time in an environment less rife with diversions and pressure. He had been sent to the isolated monastery in the hills above San Francisco to recover.

Maretti's mistake was bringing the cursed text with him.

There it was again.

Father Maretti carefully placed his quill pen into the inkwell and pushed back his chair. He stepped into the hall and called, "Who's there?" in his native Italian, then repeated the question in English.

The echo of his own voice and nothing more.

There could be no one there. It wasn't possible. Noises were amplified in the stone hallways that ran, maze-like, beneath the old church. If someone had been there, the sound of the person's retreat would have echoed down the passage.

And yet....

There came another sound, not footfalls this time but the rustling of papers, from behind him. Father Maretti rushed back into his small room.

"My God," he whispered, in English this time. "What are you doing here?" he asked, alarm coloring his voice.

The man standing next to the cluttered table offered him a smile. "It's good to see you, too, Father. I see you've finished translating the text?"

"You must leave immediately."

"I intend to," the man said, "but first...." He reached into his pocket and took out a dagger with a slender, silver blade. "Requiescat in pace, Padre," he said.

Santa Helena, California, 1889

"You're a wonderful doctor, Sophia."

She could hear her husband's words clearly, as though he were standing beside her in the room and not lying in the cemetery just outside of town, where he had been for two months. They did not bring comfort to her now, as they had in the past.

As Sophia Sebastian gazed down at the dark-haired man on the bed, she did not feel like a wonderful doctor. "I wish you were here, Sam," she whispered.

Two days ago, she had discovered the young man, no more than Sam's age - twenty-five years old, unconscious and bleeding at her door. She had stitched him back together as best she could but now, as the fever raged through him, she knew he would not last another night.

Sometimes he ranted and rambled in what she assumed was Italian; other times, he only repeated a single word "Fuoco;" still other times, like now, he lay still and silent.

She did not know the young man's name or where he was from. She had found him dressed in robes that indicated he most likely was a servant of God. The tattered leather satchel at his side contained a few dusty books, a rosary, and a journal written in a language she did recognize.

While his identity was unknown, his wounds were not new to her. She had seen similar injuries to six men. Four men, including her husband Sam, had been...gutted like freshly killed deer...during the past two months. These six men had been killed outright and, in some ways, were fortunate. The remaining two victims, like the young man, had received deep cuts but they should have lived with proper medical attention.

Instead, she watched each of them succumb to fevered states that were unlike anything she had ever seen. It was an infection, it had to be, though the wounds did not turn brilliant red and weep yellowish fluid like most infections that she had studied.

"Medico?"

Sophia was pulled back to reality when the man on the bed spoke.

His voice was barely a whisper but surprisingly clear.

"Medico?" he repeated. "Medica?"

Medica. Medical? Doctor. Sophia nodded and gently squeezed his hand. "Yes," she said, "I'm Doctor Sebastian."

"Per favore," he said, speaking quickly, "li ho bisogno di fare qualcosa. Ho bisogno del mio giornale."

"I...I don't understand," Sophia said, shaking her head, helpless. She recognized the language as Italian, but she only knew it from the operas she had attended as a young girl growing up in Philadelphia. At the opera, there had always been subtitles.

The young man motioned for his satchel, which was lying open on the chair next to the bed. Sophia lifted the bag to his waiting hands and he pulled out the journal. He ripped out a page and shoved the crumpled sheet of paper into the doctor's hand.

"Please," he began, speaking with difficulty in heavily accented English. "I need...this cabled to Rome...immediately."

Sophia saw the urgency and the desperation in the young man's eyes and she nodded. "I'll do it," she promised.

The young man smiled weakly and closed his eyes. Moments later, Sophia felt his hand go slack.

- END PROLOGUE -