Chapter 8
At the castle, Larissa subtly directed the group towards the right floor they were looking for, but otherwise followed them. They passed the lab six times before Larissa just sat next to the door and watched them pass several more times before they came to her. "Do you know the way, girl?" Van Helsing said gruffly.
Larissa acted extremely aggravated and exasperated. "Finally! You know, you walked past this door like, ten times before even considering that I might know." She hit the door next to her with the palm of her hand.
"So do you?" Anna asked.
"No. I only stopped her for a reason."
"I told you she would know!" the monk said superiorly.
"Oh, shut up Carl." Van Helsing muttered. 'So that's his name.' Larissa thought. As the two started to argue back and forth, Larissa got extremely frustrated.
Anna, who seemed used to their bickering, pushed them apart so that she could get into the lab. Van Helsing and Carl stopped fighting to look at each other and hurried to follow her. Larissa traipsed through the door after them, only to hear their endings of self-pity.
"…We've been looking for him for more than four hundred years!" Anna said, moving her hands to emphasize her point.
Carl looked around Van Helsing and put his hands on his hips. "Yes, well, I wasn't around for those four hundred years, now was I?" Anna stared at him, Van Helsing turned to stare at him, and Larissa leaned against the door frame of the entrance of the lab…staring at him.
"You've found something out?" Van Helsing asked. Carl responded in a very annoying voice that said 'I know something you done, and I'm going to withhold it from you for as long as I want because I can and it's fun to make you suffer'. He said, "I'll tell you at Valerious manor." They hurried back out of the castle, Anna ending up having to convince Larissa to go with them.
Very little was said as they go horses to ride back to Anna's home. Van Helsing kept trying to talk to Larissa, but she shrugged him off and kept closer to Anna and Carl. Anna and Carl eve prodded at her a bit but realized she didn't wish to talk. Larissa didn't know why she didn't want to answer their questions; when Verona, Marishka, and Aleera had inquired about her, she had practically given them her life story. She blamed emotional stress for that occurrence, but found no reason to hold information from them since they had known her almost as well as herself. However, she wouldn't even tell them (Anna, Carl, and Van Helsing) her age.
As they neared Anna's manor, Larissa mulled the though over in her head. There had to be a reason besides she didn't tangle with strangers well! Larissa was jerked out of her thoughts as Van Helsing lifted her off the horse she was on and sat her down in front of him. Van Helsing was the only one to notice that Larissa jerked back from him as though his touch burned her; the other two were already inside, and Larissa hurried after them as though nothing had happened, not so closely followed by Van Helsing.
They made their way through elaborate halls, which glinted in the firelight of the torches. The most revered thing, it seemed, were the weapons that lined the halls in every way imaginable, but the most alluring adornment any place they passed, was a perfect, every detail there, map of Transylvania, painted right there on the wall.
When they reached the study up in a tower, Larissa pretty much stopped listening when Van Helsing said, "Well Carl, what have you learned?" She stopped because Carl started saying many a thing she had read about when she was at Frankenstein Castle. Instead, her attention was drawn to the opposite side of the room where portraits were hanging. Larissa started at the beginning of the row.
The first was of a man and his wife (you could tell by the way he had an arm about her waist), both of which had traits similar to Velkan and Anna. The man had short, wavy, dirty blonde hair. His eyes were brown and had a shine in his eyes that was captured in the portrait masterfully. He was tall and wore the very decorative clothes of the nobles-except in his case he was royalty. The woman had Dark brown hair with natural highlights that accentuated her pale skin. In contrast, she had deep blue eyes that stood out in her dark outfit. She seemed to be happy, but a shadow was over her face, giving her an ominous expression.
The next was what seemed to be a family portrait, the couple with a boy of about one, his blue eyes shining bright, and sitting at their feet. The next one, the boy was older, and then came the first appearance of a baby girl. The portraits after that seemed yearly (though who could tell). After about the thirteenth family portrait, the mother stopped showing; death the most suspected culprit. Every year, you could tell the family was more heavily weighted on. The children's expressions got more serious and distant as they grew into adults, although they still had that shine in their eyes that said they were happy to be alive with their family. Then there wasn't another family portrait, but that of Prince Velkan Valerious as indicated by the plaque on the frame beneath, alone and no trace of emotion on his face. The next was of Anna. She looked to be in her late teens, early twenties. She too was alone, but her expression was that of loneliness and loss.
Suddenly Larissa was hit with the sight of a black velvet curtain which reached from just above the portraits and reached down to brush the stone floor and was long enough to cover two or three more portraits before the wall ended. Larissa reached up to pull the rope that would lift the curtain off of the portraits. She was entranced by what would have had to be hidden, felt a yearning to see.
Just as her hand touched the silk rope, her wrist was caught in a soft grip. Larissa turned to see Anna holing onto her arm, stopping her from pulling down. Anna had a somewhat sad look on her face. "Some things are better kept in the dark Larissa. I wish not to see what is behind." Anna sighed. "Come. Van Helsing thinks he's got an idea." Larissa took one last look at the covered portion of the wall before following Anna out of the study.
Van Helsing was standing in triumph in front of the map mentioned earlier. Just standing. As if he didn't know how to proceed.
"Okay, he's infinitely brilliant. A wall is your savior. A wall! I ask you." Larissa said in a rather loud whisper to Anna, sarcasm taking over. Van Helsing shot her a glare, but said, "This, I think this is the door!"
While Carl went closer to look, Larissa asked, "A door? What, are you going to break a hole in the wall?"
Anna smiled and Van Helsing growled in frustration. He pinched the bridge of his nose and ground out, "Remind me why you brought her along?"
"I did because she was stuck with Dracula and his brides. And that ignoring the fact that she is human and they are (or were) vampires."
Carl cut in. "There's a Latin inscription, but I can't finish it. There's a piece missing." He gestured to a rip (so apparently it wasn't painted as originally though) in the bottom left corner, butting off sever and a half lines of the inscription. Anna, Carl, and Larissa looked to Van Helsing, who was murmuring to himself. After a while Larissa sat in one of the nearby chairs, bored, while Carl was in the other chair with a book he had fetched and Anna was sharpening the sword the she always carried at her side. "Aha!"
Carl jumped and fell off his seat as Van Helsing reached into a pocket in the overcoat he wore and pulled out a scroll. Anna sheathed her sword and stood next to Van Helsing when he unrolled the ripped bit of yellowing parchment. "Carl, finish it!" Carl scrambled to retrieve the parchment and lay nearly flat on his stomach as he finished the map and inscription. He said a string of Latin words, which Van Helsing translated.
"In the name of God, open this door."
Slivers of reflective material crept from the center of the map along the rivers and letters before expanding. The whole process took less than thirty seconds before the whole map was the equivalent to a mirror.
"What does it mean? Dracula has no reflection in the mirror." Anna said.
"But why?" Van Helsing said.
"Maybe…maybe to Dracula it isn't a mirror at all." Carl concluded. Van Helsing took this into consideration before moving to touch the mirror-like substance. His hand went strait through, and from where his hand moved, ice-like cracks appeared.
"It's cold. And it's snowing." He took his hand out of the substance and it was covered in snow.
"Good job Van Helsing." Larissa said, stepping to the mirror, in which she could see him making a face and move to defend himself. "That wasn't sarcasm." She informed him and smirked. He was sputtering as she moved through the substance, which felt like a cool, comforting presence before she was hit with a blast of frigid air.
The first thing she saw was a dead tree with decayed skeleton's hanging from its branches, slightly blowing in the wind. A noise came from behind her and she moved to the side. Van Helsing moved through with a torch in hand, closely followed by Anna, also with a torch. They looked at the mirror for a moment, but Carl did not follow. The three of them set off to the mountain sized castle about one hundred meters away from them.
The noise came again, but was quickly followed by a think. "I see Carl saw the skeletons." Larissa muttered. Van Helsing smiled and Anna gave a short, slightly nervous laugh.
Carl joined them in their trek to the castle shortly afterward, but they were stopped by an enormous iron door. Larissa could have sworn that Carl let out a frustrated squeak, and Van Helsing swore under his breath. However, Larissa looked merely annoyed and started searching at the base of the castle whilst the others figured out the problem.
Brownie points for those who can guess what Larissa's looking for )
I'm flattered that you think so Fortune Zyne. Thanks
Catlover15489: Thank you! Ah, well, I think I mention it later on, but I'll make up something on the spot. Hm…oh yes, after Aleera yelled at everybody not to touch Larissa, she hurried to Dracula. But before she could tell Dracula that they (Anna and Van Helsing) had taken Larissa, Dracula sensed the sun bomb thing of Carl's and pushed Aleera behind one of the curtains (and that worked for her not getting hurt because those curtains were like two to three inches thick back then). Dracula's like the supreme vampire of all time, so sun doesn't hurt him. Does that help? I hope it does.
Princess Airiana: No, I don't think that Larissa's going to be completely loyal to anyone. I think she's just unsure of what she should do, since she doesn't know who her mother is yet, and she's made friends with the brides and made an acquaintance with Anna, so she's a bit confused. So am I, actually. Tell you the truth, I was running myself in circles the other day about this very thing while I was trying to explain it to some of my friends. ) However, I don't think she's going to like Van Helsing much (can't you tell?)