Journey Home
1892
They stopped to make camp for the night.
'What were you doing out here anyway?' Gabriel asked as he helped cook the kill.
'We got a lead on a vampire that killed one of our own,' Sonia answered. 'Slippery bastard.'
'Of course he's a slippery bastard,' Yvette said. 'There are five Belmont Slayers hunting him for that, and he knows it.'
Gabriel nodded. That was fair enough. Any vampire with any self-preservation knew that when they killed a Belmont, they could bloody well expect the rest of the family to come after them. If they were smart, they kept their heads down and tried to avoid all conflict in future. He'd never even heard of one that was that smart.
'I actually hope he's stupid enough to still be hanging around France,' Sonia said. 'I think Richter deserves that kill.'
Yvette nodded. 'Oh, definitely. But I'm not sure how likely it is with that bloody Messiah.'
'Messiah?' Gabriel asked.
Yvette and Sonia glanced at each other. They seemed to wordlessly agree on something.
'You've probably heard of her,' Sonia said. 'Operating mostly out of the Baltic region. Erzabeth Bathory.'
Gabriel pulled a face and nodded. 'Her cruelty has become rather widespread, I'm afraid. They say even as a human she was a monster.'
'Yeah, turns out she drank from the Egyptian God of War, Sekhemet,' Yvette responded. 'And word on the street is that she absorbed her powers as a result. She had plans to blot out the sun.'
'Vampire flocked to France in droves,' Sonia explained. 'Fanatical and loyal to Bathory. And then she really bloody did it.'
Gabriel looked up. 'The sun was shining when I arrived.'
'Yeah, it only lasted a few hours,' Yvette said. 'Violette – that is, Belmont Slayer number five – lives in France. Specifically, she lives in Leon's old homestead.'
'Unlike the rest of us who practice elemental magic,' Sonia continued, 'she specialises in black magic.'
'Fill in the blanks,' Yvette added.
Gabriel snorted inelegantly. 'I suppose she burned a good percentage of the vampire population when she did that.'
'From what we hear,' Yvette agreed. 'They were out terrorising the humans so there were few places to hide when the sun suddenly came back.'
Gabriel had a light chuckle at that. 'God, I wish I could have seen it.'
'Oh, so do I,' Sonia agreed. 'Aside from the stray Night Creatures we still find out here, there's hardly anything to do.'
Gabriel frowned. 'Why are there stray Night Creatures?'
'Oh, a Hoard of the Night was loosed on Wallachia some centuries ago,' Sonia answered. 'I think they used to be a lot more common. Papa used to tell me how he'd roll into a town and get free food and beer if he dragged a dead Night Creature in behind him.'
Yvette chuckled. 'I remember that. These days, almost nobody remembers what a Night Creature looks like enough to know the significance.'
Gabriel blinked. 'Do Forgemasters…just not occur anymore?'
'Oh, they do,' Sonia agreed. 'But around the tail end of the fifteenth century, a book was published by a Forgemaster called Hector. It became unofficial required reading for forgemasters and included some observations about the nature of Night Creatures beyond the previously assumed. As well as the dangers of becoming a forgemaster.'
'Dangers?'
'Seems Hector ended up enslaved by the Four Stryrian Vampire Queens to make them Night Creatures,' Yvette told him. 'Seeing as vampires can't forge Night Creatures, many of them, it turns out, used to manipulate or capture human forgemasters to do it for them. Suddenly, being a forgemaster wasn't as popular as it once was.'
'I can imagine,' Gabriel agreed. 'Even I was aware that happened.' He frowned. 'Though…I can't think why not. It makes sense.'
'Hm,' Sonia agreed. 'I went out to meet Hector myself once. He was an old man by then. He told me he started forging as a child – usually bringing back dead animals like cats and dogs. Which explains where Midnight came from.'
'Midnight?'
'An undead pup we found,' Yvette said. 'Long story. Involves Dracula. He made use of two of them.'
Gabriel frowned. 'He was the one who released the Hoard on Wallachia, wasn't he? Or rather…he will.'
'Yes,' both Yvette and Sonia answered.
'Something to look forward to,' Gabriel grumbled.
Yvette and Sonia glanced at each other.
Gabriel sighed. 'This book the forgemaster wrote. I would be interested in having a read of it myself.'
'I'm pretty sure there's a copy in the library,' Yvette said.
'Library?' Gabriel's face lit up. 'There's a library in town now?'
'Uh…'
The three of them strolled down the road. There was little more for them to talk about, but Sonia's mind had been turning – for once not on the plight of having her grandfather in the future.
'Hm,' Sonia suddenly said. 'Hey, Yvette.'
'Yes?'
'I've often wondered, but I've never asked. Remember the fight that gave my brother most of his power?'
'The one with the Rebis, yes.'
'Papa, mama, and Adrien had to fight their way past five vampires,' Sonia said. 'But you and Eliza were already there.'
'And you want to know how?' Yvette asked with a wry smile.
'Yes.'
'The first point is that those five were focused on the fighting going on downstairs,' Yvette told her. 'They weren't looking for a pair of Seven Year Slayers. Also, Eliza and I didn't come in the same way your parents and Adrien did. Remember, it was Eliza who taught me that little "sneak up on vampires" trick.'
Gabriel listed to this with bemusement. 'Who's Adrien?'
'He's a friend,' Yvette said.
A fight with some Night Creatures had them stop to wash blood out of their travelling cloaks.
'Bloody Hell, what finally induced Dracula to release so many Night Creatures?' Gabriel wondered as he hung the cloaks over a thick branch to dry.
'Long story,' Yvette remarked. 'And, like I said night before last, there's less than there were.'
'But it does remind me.' Sonia clicked. 'Grandpapa, have you met Count St. Germain yet?'
Gabriel turned the name over in his head and came back to join them. 'I can't say I have. Who is he?'
'He's a court magician and a confidence man but…I still had to drop him in your time.'
Gabriel pulled a face. 'Whatever for?'
'Because two years before Sonia was born, Trevor ended up in a fight with Death,' Yvette said.
Gabriel started. 'Death? The Elemental? That Death?'
'The very same. Trevor won, but he'd have died if St. Germain hadn't returned a favour and opened a portal around him at the last minute.' Yvette shrugged. 'Of course, he caused the problem in the first place.'
Sonia chuckled. 'Well, Death was the one pulling the strings, wasn't he? If it wasn't St. Germain, it would've been someone else. And we'd have no guarantee that person would save my father in that moment.'
'True.'
Another thing Gabriel filed away for later.
Apart from Sonia's slip of the tongue when he first met her, he had a feeling nothing that Yvette and Sonia told him was told to him without purpose. Every piece of information they gave him, they had some sense that he was supposed to know it. There was a likely reason for that, but he could address that issue when he got himself home.
In the meantime, he followed them back to Belmont Manor.
'Not too far now,' he heard Sonia mutter.
