Transylvania
They arrived in Romania early in the morning. From there they took the bus as far as it would take them. From there, they went on horseback, crossing through the rugged highlands and mountains. Their goal was the Castle Dracula, on the border of Wallachia and Transylvania.
The horses were weary. They hooves barely cleared the ground with their shaky strides, and salt formed on their flanks where sweat had long dried.
"We have to break," Fr. Molloy said, whoaing his mount and sliding off.
"Yer right. There's no sense in killin' the poor beasts this far from the castle."
"How far you figger we are by now?" Nelson asked, leading Fr. Molloy's horse and his over to a tree.
"About two day's ride from the village. On horses, that's about half a day to the castle."
"Up the Borgo Pass," Dante half-asked. He could scarcely force himself to believe it; he did not want to believe it.
"What's the Borgo Pass?" Millhouse asked.
"The winding mountain road to my father's castle," Alucard said, "A path fraught with peril. We'd best time our journey so we reach the castle before nightfall."
"Yes. But I doubt the house of Dracula would provide much protection at night."
"No. But there are places of safety within its walls still. Places where no dark thing can enter, where the touch of Dracula has not reached. I speak of the chapel. There were two chapels, in fact, but the one is now little more than a ruin. The main chapel is still intact. And it is in that very chapel that Burns seeks to revive Dracula."
"Wait a minute! I thought tha' no vampire could ever set foot in a blessed place," Seamus interrupted.
"Normally, no. But there are ways a holy place could be made temporarily safe for a vampire. By removing all blessed items and holy images, and celebrating the Profane Mass, the blessing of a place can be temporarily 'suspended', so that a vampire may enter, or, in Dracula's case, be reborn. In fact, specific ritual Burns seeks to perform require a holy place perverted, and is made stronger by its location in Dracula's ancestral home, where he was born, raised, and was killed."
"You said the 'blessing' was temporarily suspended…?"
"Of course, once blessed a thing is forever of God. The ritual vampires and their slaves use is only a brief reprieve, and often lasts only for one night, and is impossible to repeat. I believe the Devil-worshipper's spells say it can only be done once a century, on the dark of the moon. As it is, this Friday is the full moon, so if they performed the ritual, they did so earlier this month."
He paused. Fr. O'Flaherty looked around; Nelson had tied the horses to a nearby log. Dolph had started a fire, and Kearney was preparing the tents.
"Of course, the Devil's rules aren't God's rules. A place can be made holy again simply by blessing it. Celebrating the Mass does the same, as can exorcism, if the place is inhabited by evil spirits. A place can be 'evil-proofed' if repeatedly blessed and exorcised. Of course, much of this is theory, based on personal experience and those of a few exorcists I've met."
"But," Fr. Molloy asked tentatively, "If we get there in time, we'll be able to re-christen the chapel, and that will stop Burns, right?"
"From resurrecting Dracula? For the time being, yes. But he very well may kill Maggie and Eric out of spite, and then go ta make mischief all across the continent, causing us considerable trouble for many years, even decades." He looked to his young acolyte, and set his hand on his shoulder. "Therein are the two harder objectives: saving the two children, and killing Burns for good."