Work Text:
Lisa nearly lost count of the monotonous days spent on the road. The trek from England to Târgoviște proved to be no small feat that quickly had Lisa regretting not accepting Vlad’s offer of superhuman travel much sooner. If not for her stubbornness they likely could have cut down their journey by at least half the time. For the most part the day before bled into the day after, but they were coming upon the one time of day that she loved the most. Being so far into the forest they could not see the sun’s descent below the horizon, but they could still tell by the hues of purple and orange that colored the sky that nightfall was not far from them.
“The sunsets in England are truly nothing to brag about compared to this.” Lisa could feel her husband’s warm smile on her without even looking, too enraptured with the colors of Wallachia she missed so much.
“Yes, they are quite beautiful.”
“You’re not even looking at the sky!” she exclaimed with a swift playful hit to his chest that had him chuckling in his velvety tenor.
The next few hours were spent in a comfortable silence, only interrupted on occasion by the horses’ whinnying. By now the two of them would consider retiring for the night and continuing their wagon ride at the first sign of light, if it wasn’t for a familiar outline emerging in the distance.
Over the top of the trees, towering spires could be seen cutting through the sky like a rapier wielded by the earth– a dark splotch of darkness against a sea of green. The last time Lisa had seen the castle from this view was when she had been fighting against the winds of a wasteland in the hopes of earning the knowledge guarded by its proprietor. Now she could say the second time had been to visit the child she sired with said proprietor.
Her excitement was palpable, as was Vlad’s, though he always insisted on playing the part of a stoic man. The last five years could only be described as a stunted happiness. They were infinitely grateful for their second chance at life together, even if the methods behind it were more than questionable. Not every day was new, but every day was appreciated. However, it never felt truly fulfilling without Adrian.
Lisa could see the sorrow in Vlad’s eyes when she spoke their son’s name– a deep regret for how they had left things, and Lisa as well had her bad days where she could think of nothing else but hugging her child again. There were likely hundreds of times where either of them felt the urge to leave England immediately with only themselves in tow if it meant getting to him faster. Alas, that sentiment never made it far as they both still feared the reactions.
The castle proceeded to appear in and out of view as they navigated the now unfamiliar terrain. The both of them could sense a shift in the air the closer they were to the castle’s vicinity. Bats flew in and out of branches, some of them even rudely diving for the horses which caused them to be distressed. The behavior of animals always became a peculiar thing around the castle, likely because they too could sense something not quite right about it. Some creatures flocked to that feeling while others scurried with a tail between their legs. Even the presence of bats was an anomaly as they were not native to this area, but they always found refuge in the dark halls of Dracula’s domain.
They were more than several minutes from arriving at the entrance, yet there was a distinct stench of death that Lisa had a difficult time recalling in her memories. It wafted through the leaves of the trees spanning miles back, infecting every molecule of air like a false belief. The horses were growing more and more irritated with each step, and at one point they simply refused to move at all no matter how much Lisa tried to calm them down. Vlad also found their behavior somewhat out of character, but ultimately it was no surprise they refused to meet the devil at his house.
The rest of the way would have to be done on foot. Lisa took a lead out of the back of the wagon and tied the two horses to a nearby tree that was just far enough to be spooked by the castle’s overwhelming aura, while Vlad used his nails to carve a small warding rune on the bark of the tree. That way any predators would be warded off from the area where all of their supplies remained.
It was fortunate for them the horses managed most of the way which made for a much shorter walk, though that unfortunate smell still lingered, in fact it was getting stronger. Vlad could hear Lisa’s heart thumping in a fast rhythm. It was hard to ascertain whether that was due to the nature of their arrival or the ominous atmosphere of the forest, but he could probably make a reasonable assumption that it was more of the former with a sprinkle of the latter.
They knew they were getting closer by the increasing offensiveness of the stench, and they knew they had arrived when the sight was of even greater offense to their eyes.
A field of corpses– stakes driven through one orifice just to exit out another– in various states of decay. Necrotic flesh came off their skin in ribbons, the rest having either been digested by the land long ago or finding a place in the stomach of a blackbird. Lisa would have surely lost her lunch by now if it wasn’t for the fact she didn’t have any. Vlad himself did not find this brutish display as nauseating as his wife, but it surely did throw him off his guard for many reasons.
Lisa sought comfort by her husband’s side, muttering under breath like she had none, “What in the nine rings of hell happened here.” Lisa did not seek an answer but one may have soothed her increasingly frayed nerves. The last time she saw such a savage showcase was once again mirrored by her first meeting with the man right beside her, but since then she was never privy to anything that even remotely matched that level of cruelty. It gave her a very poor feeling about what they were going to find on the other side of the imposing doors that overlooked its army of the dead.
In their eagerness to desert the area immediately, they almost missed the anachronistic ruins standing not too far from their view at the bottom of the stoop. Vlad ushered his wife inside with haste, but he still managed to catch a glimpse of its recognizable architectural features. Even in shambles Vlad Dracula recognized the house of Belmont– certainly a curious decision to parallel Dracula’s castle to the family home of the lineage hell-bent on killing him, but judging by the abundance of staked cadavers there were more pressing issues to address.
Vlad closed the towering doors behind him with ease, protecting his wife from the distant howls of wolves and the stares of the haunted dead. Only when the room was plunged into pitch black did he realize that there was no light source, and that Lisa was not privy to the powers of night vision like himself. Lisa hardly had to gesture her head before he was igniting the fires within the dozens of sconces that lined the stone pillars.
“That’s much better– my, I nearly forgot what it’s like to constantly have an echo.”
A feature of the castle’s high ceilings and frequent vaulted areas meant that an echo was a phenomenon that came with the territory. Over time you hardly notice it, but living in a small cottage by the European river-side is a noticeable contrast from the constantly expanding beast that is Dracula’s castle.
With each new flame unlocked a deeper and darker part of the castle’s main hall. The ornamentations of the walls and carvings of the pillars that Vlad spent centuries looking upon were now bathed in the warmth of the fire’s light. Not much had seemed to change since his last moments here, the only new additions being the tears in the running carpet and a few new holes in the walls that he could’ve sworn he doesn’t remember making.
They took a moment to take in their surroundings, familiar in memory but foreign in feeling. An unspoken secret neither of them could quite put their finger on was the fact that something felt undoubtedly off. It was not immediately obvious, as neither of them were referring to the presence of something unknown, but instead the absence of something they’d grown accustomed to. Noise. It was the absence of noise.
The castle, as expansive and foreboding as it was, was never quiet. There was always some curious oddity or another lurking around the corner, or a murder of crows practicing their calls right outside the windows. Even the sub levels had their share of squeaking rodents and dripping pipes, yet it seems on this night the few signs of life in a castle of death did not make their appearance. It made one wonder how many nights had been just like this one, where you could hear even the stillness of the air. It was like static if you listened too long.
“Vlad, doesn’t it seem a little too quiet to you,” her words trailed off at the end, confused by her husband when she averted her gaze to face him. He stood some feet away from her, like a pillar that had found its way off the wall, and had his sharp eyes trained on the darkened ceiling of the room. He had found something, something that Lisa did not.
She too dared to look up, only seeing shadows and the vague outline of the rafters above. The next few minutes or so were spent with their necks craned to the ceiling like baby birds. Lisa continued to see nothing while Vlad continued to stare down whatever called to him in the void of darkness. Lisa was moments away from averting her still gaze and snapping her husband out of this strange trance when she saw something move. It was ever so slight, small enough to possibly be chalked up to a trick of the light, but something in her gut told her it wasn’t.
Vlad could tell when she saw it before she even had to speak up. The coloring of the person was drained given the shadowed surroundings, but their outline to him was nearly as clear to him as if it was day.
Long tresses of unkempt hair cascaded down the stranger’s back, and what little of their body their hair failed to cover was hidden by a mid-size nightshirt. Their face was concealed by the legs they kept tightly drawn to their body in an upright fetal position. Very few creatures, whether of supernatural or mortal origin, would dare to take refuge in the lair of a vampire, yet this mysterious figure did so with an unusual comfortability and additionally with a discreet arrogance deduced through the predatory gaze peeking over top of their knees. Even when Vlad met their narrowed stare they did not flinch nor look away, and thus they remained stuck in a mute battle of dominance, neither of them wavering.
Nerves were tense, but that was quickly solved like a knife cutting through the thick atmosphere, literally.
A thin sword emerged from darkness, clearly of the magic variety given its ability to be wielded remotely simply by the user’s mental guide. It struck through the air almost faster than Lisa could see it, moving in a blur across the room and stopping just before Vlad’s face. Vlad did not budge an inch.
“What is your business here?” The stranger spoke with a voice that sounded dry. It cracked and strained from what could be assumed was disuse. Every word sounded more painful to say than the last. Lisa looked to Vlad, likely too perplexed to do much herself, but he was not a man known for bending a knee.
“I am Vlad Dracula Tepes, the lord of this castle, and I think I may ask you the same question.” The matter of his title was stressed by his pinching of the sword’s metal tip, directing it away from his eyes with little to no effort like it was child’s play.
There came no answer.
Lisa cut in anyways, “We seek the whereabouts of someone by the name of Adrian Tepes. Would you know him by chance?” She spoke strongly, refusing to be intimidated by this silhouette’s crude threats of violence.
A heartbeat or two went by when his voice boomed in what Lisa described as misplaced anger. “No one by that name resides here. You have no business in this place and I ask you to leave at once.”
“What is your relation to him?” asked Vlad. It was a strange question, but one that was clearly not asked carelessly.
“All you need to know is that the person you seek is not here. Now I ask you once again to leave.” Her heart ached at the idea of her precious boy having passed on before his time, but something in her heart told her that was not the truth of the matter.
“I ask that you step into the light. It is unbecoming to not converse with your guests face to face,” requested Vlad.
For a minute it seemed his peculiar request would not be met given that the man still remained in the rafters. Only when he disappeared into a swarm of bats and rematerialized by the front door were they satisfied.
Even in the light the man’s colors seemed so muted. His knotted hair that still covered most of his upper body was a pale blonde, hardly contrasting against his unnatural alabaster skin. The night shirt was torn in some places, wrinkled in others, and overall greatly discolored from its original whiteness to be various hues of yellow and red for reasons neither of them wanted to think of. Through the gaps of his attire a strange scarred pattern could be seen spanning across his body like it was some kind of invisible restraint. The scars looked nasty and possibly even infected in some places. There was no doubt that it had to hurt a great deal. The man supported himself on unsteady legs, lending notice to how skinny he seemed overall. It was a pitiful sight, one that had Lisa’s heart squeezing itself in a mournfulness she failed to understand.
The man did not initiate speech, but he didn’t initiate a fight either so they were at least glad for that consideration.
Vlad asked him his name, eager to simply end the tiring interaction and learn of their son’s location if not here. It all seemed like a reality within reach, and in some universe it likely could have been, if not for the name uttered that the two recognized for all of the wrong reasons.
“Alucard”
So much said in so few words. They both knew immediately who it was they were talking to, but it was a pain to the heart to hear. Alucard; the opposition of Dracula in every way. Lisa hated that name. To think others turned her child into nothing more than a symbol to oppose his own father. It stripped Adrian of everything else he was: generous, intelligent, curious, and every other word a mother may use to describe her love for her only child. It implied his only worthy identity was one forever tied to his lineage when she knew he was so much more.
Despite the cursed word, it was still him they looked at even now. It was their boy; their precious baby boy that was covered in grime and smelled of hell. How could they not see it?
The tears accumulated swiftly behind Lisa’s eyes, torn between the grief of his physical state and the joy at being reunited. Vlad too was unsure what he could offer in this situation, but he reached out regardless, intending to comfort his distressed kin.
Adrian did not seem to reciprocate this sentiment when he was pushing his father away with a surprising harshness. He did not at all seem reassured by their presence, but instead angered by their very appearance. His eyes stared daggers, his irises resembling the color of blood. Neither of them had ever seen Adrian mimic his father’s bloodshot eyes when in a state of anger. It was horrifying to think they were the reason for such strong ire.
“I saw you through the mirror,” Adrian started, “Years ago, I used your transmission mirror. I did not think I would find anything as I was under the impression you were surely dead, but I suppose I was desperate, so I sought you out.”
Nothing he said next could be good. Adrian had known they were alive for years, and Lisa could only imagine the things that made him think. Why aren’t they coming back for me? Why did they leave me? The thought made her heart drop.
“But death isn’t what I saw. Instead you were both breathing, and smiling, and happy , together in some fucking shack in a town that’s nothing more than a blip on the map.”
Vlad however did not appear as startled as she did– instead his long face projected a forlorn regret.
“Five years,” he said. His voice was not raised— it was meek, a sound so low a mouse could rival it. He repeated, “Five years. You’ve been alive for five years.” He was in disbelief. He didn’t need to say much more than that for Lisa and Vlad to fill in the unsaid blanks.
Five years and you never came to see me.
Ever since that day, five years ago, when Lisa mournfully admitted they could not return to their beloved boy, guilt and regret were two feelings well accustomed to in the Tepes household. Guilt and regret battered that household of two, never forgetting the empty space in their hearts for the third.
For a long time they had both done well pushing it far into the recesses of their mind, convincing themselves it was the best for everyone— that Adrian could find a purpose in life not chained by his title as Dracula’s son. They spent half a decade deluding themselves that this was the right decision, but those twins of shame always had the most twisted ways of showing you how wrong you could be.
Vlad and Lisa did not try to defend themselves because they knew they truly had no shield in this fight. His words came to them like a lashing, but not one undeserved.
“I should have known. How could I be so foolish enough not to know that you’d always pick each other over me.”
“Adrian, please understand we made a mistake. We thought we were doing what was best for you; we thought-”
“No!” his voice boomed, “Your hearts have only ever held room for one another. You knew there was no space for me but you did it anyway. You consummated your sacrilegious union and sired on abomination that you were more than happy to leave rot in the heart of the devil’s domain.”
“Please, no-” Lisa begged, for what exactly, she did not know. The beginnings of a sob bubbled in her throat. To hear him loathe his very being was more than she could bear.
“You were ashamed of me. You wanted to see the world, live like man and woman and leave your devilspawn to be ravished in the bed his parent’s made his unholy existence.”
“ Oh god please no. It can’t be, please tell me it can’t-” She could not stand any longer. The meaning and the stone emotions behind his words was enough to make her fall to her knees like a woman of the cloth in front of her creator. How horribly ironic she was his creator– a creator that failed her greatest creation– a creation that regrets his own existence.
On her knees she made a quiet prayer that what her son spoke of was untrue; that he was not defiled in the bed he took his first breath in– that his purity was not desecrated while his life-givers were exploring the backstreets of England.
Vlad followed to the ground, still so insistent on holding together his wife that was falling apart, neglecting his own heart that she could hear shattering inside. He was no man of God, in fact he was the very essence of what opposed him, but in his heart he too pleaded with the man that his son did not have to pay for his father’s transgressions.
Adrian did not seem content with stopping his verbal lashings on the crumpled figures of his parents. He continued, “I remember how your eyes looked at me after. So much contempt at the disgusting creature of sin their ‘darling boy’ had become. Even my own countenance loathed me– an innocent babe seeing the travesty of his future. They all hated me. I begged for forgiveness until my lungs gave out but they did not spare me a single pitiful look.”
The painting. One of the last thing’s Vlad saw when he tore into his boy’s flesh, and one of the last things he saw before his son reciprocated that violence in his final act of mercy. An angelic child with alabaster skin and round cheeks. A head of golden wheat hair and soft hands gripping his mother’s own– two small fangs that poked out of his smiling, blushing face. The pinnacle of beauty and pride brought down so low at the hands of merciless humans, forced to grovel for forgiveness from oil paints that could not respond back– forever stuck in a meaningless joy.
“The shame I felt on every inch of my skin could not even be removed when I took a knife and peeled it away layer by layer. It just kept coming back; another torturous facet gifted to me by my cursed blood.” His skin, oh lord his skin. As a child, Lisa always compared him to a porcelain doll. Their precious and perfect porcelain doll, but after all this time it was hard to imagine that same doll was what stood before the two of them now with cracked and flayed skin. Every visible part littered in ugly, silver burns and one large blemish cutting across the expanse of his torso.
Vlad could hardly bear to look at his devious handiwork. How he was ever insane enough to put his hands on his child in such a manner was beyond him, but never before did he see himself as worthy of a stake to the heart as now.
“Your apocryphal tears are wasted here. I know you shed none for me when your beastly claws perforated my skin.” Those beastly claws that cradled him as a babe, capable of so much gentleness, yet used for so much harm for the one he should have protected.
“I could feel every moment my hybrid organs slipped past the opening in my body and hit the frigid air. There were so many times I wished that you killed me then, because I know the tortures of Dante’s hell would be more forgiving than the pain in that moment, and for every pain endured after.”
For the first time in their three decades of marriage, Dracula, King of vampires and nightmare of mortals, wailed. A low, drawn out wail like a pained dog. It was a hideous, animalistic sound of a deep anguish, and for what he’s done to his own flesh and blood he may as well be an animal.
“My boy, I am sorry. I am so sorry. I have committed unforgivable acts against you– you, the greatest treasure I’ve ever known and I hurt you.” He reached his clawed fingers to that beautiful blonde hair he received from his mother, yearning to feel the touch of his kin after so long. All he wanted was his child to come back to him, to find his way through this fog of darkness he has been lost in for all these years. If only he could be that guiding light for his boy the way he was for him.
Adrian gripped his father’s clothed wrist, keeping him in a standstill that prevented him from making the contact he needed so desperately.
“You have no purpose here, but I do. I will fade away in this castle that I’ve accepted as my tomb, protecting the only thing here worth a damn that is so ironically dedicated to ending the lives of creatures like myself.”
“But why? You could have so much more. They left you here alone after you were forced to kill your father. Why do you bear this responsibility for them?” The hypocrisy was not lost on her; speaking ill of her son’s deserters as if she was not among them, but if she’d known the weight of his grief–the horrible things in store for him– she would have crossed the land on foot to return home to him.
“Because that is what he asked of me, and I will see it fulfilled even if it kills me. If you find yourself so eager to ‘travel like a man’ then I suggest you take your leave and do so already. There is nothing for you here.” Adrian turned to leave, seemingly done speaking his peace, but Lisa could tell if there was any chance for redemption, it was now or never again.
“Please, let us make these years up to you. I had no idea how much you suffered but I will spend every day for the rest of my life making that up to you. In England we thought only of you. We counted down the days until we could see you again– We just thought we were doing what was best for you.”
If there was any time for Adrian to say something it was now– the silence showed how determined he was to defy his parent’s wishes for any of their fears to be even slightly assuaged. Instead, he allowed them to stew in their rivers of remorse, always swept under the currents when their heads were just above water.
Then in the next moment, he vanished in a huff of fog. Gone with the stilled winds of the castle while Vlad and Lisa stayed to drown.