Okay so I got a few reviews (thanks guys!) so I'm posting 2 chapters at once since they go together really well
I'm so glad you like it:)
-Twenty years later-
Katja smiled down at her young son and daughter as they lay in their beds by the warm fire. It was very cold on autumn nights in Romania, and she had tucked them in warmly, expecting them to go to sleep quickly. She hadn't counted on their appetite for stories so close to All Hallows Eve, and last night had nearly exhausted her repertoire, though she was a gifted storyteller.
"Mama, tell about the werewolf," Hans demanded, brown eyes shining. "No, we heard that one already, Mama. Tell us about the…the…" Little Sonja stopped, dumbfounded. For the first time in her life, she could not think of a single story.
"Tell us the scariest story your Mama ever told you," Hans interrupted, immensely pleased with herself. He reached over and tweaked his sister's braid.
"Hey! Mamaaaa!"
"Shhh, Sonja. Hans, do not do that again." She sat and stared into the fire. "All right. One more story."
"This happened a long time ago, when I was a girl…"
Katja told them about the beautiful mansion at the edge of the forest, so large that it was almost a castle. One afternoon, walking close to its walls, she heard sounds like muffled sobs coming from within, followed by a short silence, then what sounded like a roar.
She had fallen to the ground in paralyzed terror as the giant window above her shattered and a huge winged creature the color of blood came tearing out of the mansion, uttering the most inhuman shrieks she could ever imagine. Their memory still sent tingles down her back.
The creature landed at the edge of the forest, apparently unaware of her presence, and shrank before her horrified eyes into a very handsome man with a long, dark ponytail. He would have been handsome, anyway, had his face not been so contorted with grief. He sank to his knees and sobbed, raising his face to the sky and cursing in such terms that Katja had clapped her hands over her ears.
In a few minutes, he seemed to collect himself, but his eyes stared straight ahead, unseeing, and in them was a deadly fury. He walked straight past her—again—to the wall, walked up the wall (she got a look of disbelief from Hans at this), and entered the broken window, which was at least 12 feet above the ground.
The man—or beast, whatever he was—emerged the same way, carrying in his arms something that chilled Katja: a dead woman and a long bundle whose contents she did not want to guess. Had he murdered the woman? She looked unnaturally pale, even for one dead, and Katja saw that her gowns were stained with blood.
The man walked straight ahead until he reached the fringes of the forest. He paused for a moment, then continued into its depths. Katja, for what reason she could not fathom, followed silently.
Katja followed him for what seemed like hours, not understanding why he did not resume his…other…form—it would be much simpler to fly with the woman in his arms.
He came at last to the section of alpine meadow that bordered the great ravine. In the distance was a grand castle; it looked abandoned—lost, almost. He continued across the meadow, still carrying his burden, until he came to a spot where the downward slope was much more gradual. He laid the woman down carefully and unwound the bundle to reveal a shovel and a much smaller bundle. Taking up the shovel, he began to dig. If Katja hadn't seen his other "side", she would have been surprised at his strength.
The grave was finished within a half an hour. Katja was shocked to find that she had been here this long. She almost got up to leave, but something held her in place. She watched in fascinated horror as he began to unwind the small bundle, and felt her heart break as a tiny infant's face was revealed.
The man stared down into the infant's face, lips moving silently in what seemed to be a prayer. Then, in an accent she couldn't quite place, he said softly, "Sleep well, my little Eleanor. Rest in eternal peace." His voice broke on the last word, and he pressed his lips to the baby's forehead before he covered her face again and laid her in the woman's arms, fastening the bundle's ends around the latter's neck.
He looked down at them for a moment, then picked up the woman, baby and all, and held her against him for what seemed like an eternity. He kissed her pale lips one last time and held her head against his shoulder, tears streaming from tightly shut eyes, then took out a knife. For a heart-stopping moment, Katja thought he was going to stab himself and fall into the grave with his wife and child. She forgot about the monster, and was about to run to him when he clipped a lock of the woman's hair and put it carefully into his pocket along with the knife.
He lowered the woman and the infant into the grave, then slowly, hand trembling, picked up a clod of dirt and dropped it in, shuddering at the muffled thud. Mechanically, like some kind of terrible machine, he picked up more and more dirt and eventually used the shovel to fill in the grave, smoothing it over when he had finished.
Katja watched as the man wrenched a flat grayish stone free of the hillside and carried it—he made it look much lighter than it must have been—to the grave. Careful not to step on the freshly-turned soil, he set it at the head of the grave. Then he took out the knife and, with inhuman strength, he carved some message into the solid stone until at last the blade snapped and he hurled it into the chasm before kneeling and bowing his head as sobs tore through him. Katja could not move. Half of her wanted to leave and never see this place again, and the other half wanted to run to him and put her arms around him—he was no older than Papa, who told her stories in the evenings.
Instead, Katja watched, tears streaming from her blue eyes, as the man's back straightened at last and the sobs ceased. He stood, and his dark ponytail swung to the side as he wiped his eyes with a motion that was almost violent, turning to look in her direction—if he saw her, he didn't show it—with eyes that terrified her, dark, soulless eyes in which the last spark of emotion had died forever.
"I ran and ran and…" The older Katja looked down at her sleeping children, smiling sadly. Hans had faded into sleep soon after the monster failed to kill anyone, and Sonja was too young to comprehend what her mother was talking about. She finished the story slowly, softly, to herself.
"I tried to stay away, but one day I just had to go, I had to see. I sensed that the man was no longer there, and I wanted to see the grave just once. I ran all the way there.
"When I got there, the headstone looked the same, but the grave looked older, almost as if it itself were burdened by a terrible grief. I could sense it in the air. I went and stood by the grave, and read the headstone. It said, 'Countess Tatiana Dracula. Beloved wife of Count Vladislaus Dracula. May she ever rest in peace.' There was a horizontal line, and below it, 'Eleanor Anna Dracula. God bless and keep her.' Another line, then, in curved, almost jagged, script, as if the man—Count Vladislaus Dracula?—were trying to make the last part beautiful for his wife's sake, a single sentence: 'My heart dies with them.'
She sighed, remembering. "I felt a hand on my shoulder and looked up into the face of yet another handsome man. He was wearing odd, dark clothing and a wide hat, but I sensed no danger from him, more a quiet purpose. 'Whose grave is this?' he asked quietly.
"I did not reply at first, but finally said, 'The man's wife and child. Who are you?'
" 'Gabriel Van Helsing.' He smiled, but I did not return the smile. 'Which man?'
"I frowned. 'The dark-haired man with the ponytail. He turns into a monster.' I hoped he would not ask further. I did not want to repeat what I had seen.
"His face lit up and he said, 'God be praised! The progeny has been destroyed!'
"I wasn't sure what progeny was, and was horrified when he told me that it meant offspring, children. The baby I had seen. 'That was no baby,' he told me. 'It was a vampire-child, a foul creature of the night.' 'It was a baby!' I insisted. 'Her name was Eleanor.'
"Gabriel Van Helsing did not seem to hear me, or pretended not to, anyway. He made the sign of the cross and uttered some words in Latin, then turned to leave. I could see that in his heart he was still praising God for such a terrible thing. 'Do you not care that his wife and child died?' I shouted, though I was only eleven and yelling at adults was considered grounds for whipping.
"He turned back toward me. 'Innocents die,' he said, and in his eyes I could see true regret. Then the look vanished, and he said somewhat harshly, 'but HE would not have cared. The woman was nothing to him, my dear girl. He desires only to populate the earth with his…kind.' He turned and strode away.
"'He cried,' I said to Mr. Van Helsing's retreating back. 'Did you know that? He knelt by the grave and wept into his hands.'
"Mr. Van Helsing stopped; his back stiffened and his head came up a fraction. But he did not turn around, and after a moment continued walking away. I turned and looked at the grave, at the wilted, lovingly placed irises I had not noticed until now."
So what do you think- does VH have a heart or not?
