Anna's delicate fingers traced the map's surface gently, stopping right over the illustration of the castle marked with a disturbing blood-colored ink.
"Four hundred years ago, my ancestor made an oath before God: until we kill Dracula, the souls of our family can never ascend to heaven, condemned to wander in purgatory for all eternity."
She withdrew her hand slowly and turned around to look at Lief.
In her eyes there was no longer a trace of the weakness from the forest, there was only determination.
"The men of our family fought against him generation after generation, and died one after another, failing to fulfill the promise. Now, the bloodline has been reduced to this: my brother and I."
"..."
Velkan was standing to one side, near the window, with his hand resting perpetually on the hilt of his sword at his waist.
"Dracula is immortal," he intervened. "He is not a beast like the lycanthrope you killed today. Common weapons are ineffective against him, we have tried every known method and none have been able to end his existence. Although you are undeniably strong, facing him is..."
His words hung in the air, but the implicit meaning was crystal clear: killing a rabid dog is one thing, killing the Devil is something very different...
Without bothering to refute, Lief laughed dryly.
In his view, the true immortality of this Dracula did not exist.
What people called "immortal" was simply a puzzle for which they hadn't yet found the right piece or the proper caliber.
However, what captured his absolute attention was not their tragic story, but the map before his eyes.
That sensation of resonance...
But the calm of the study didn't last long.
Just at that moment, a commotion began to filter in from outside. At first there were only a few screams, but very soon they turned into a collective roar.
"What is happening now?" Velkan's face tensed and he turned toward the window to observe the square.
Anna and Lief followed him, leaning out.
In the middle of the square, two men dressed strangely were being surrounded by a circle of peasants holding pitchforks and torches.
One of the strangers was an imposing figure that stood out: tall, wearing a wide-brimmed hat pulled down to his eyes and a long, worn black trench coat, maintaining a posture of calm with his hands hidden.
The other was a small man, dressed in friar's robes, who was gesturing nervously trying to explain something clumsily to the mob that didn't want to listen.
"Strangers..." murmured Velkan, frowning. "Coming at this time... brings nothing good."
However, the true horror did not come from those two strangers.
Swish
Three sharp sounds, like fabric tearing violently, cut the evening air above their heads.
Immediately after, three figures nose-dived from the clouds, unfurling huge grayish bat wings as they circled over the village like vultures.
They possessed faces of extreme beauty and sculptural bodies wrapped in tatters of dresses and jewelry, but their skin was corpse-white and their eyes shone with an inhuman red light.
And upon opening their mouths, they revealed rows of sharp fangs, transforming their beautiful features into masks of thirsty predators.
"Dracula's brides!" exclaimed Anna, clenching her fists on the window ledge.
Panic flooded the peasants below.
They instantly forgot their siege on the two strangers and dissolved into a chaos of screams and shoving, seeking refuge in the houses or under wagons regardless of anything else.
The three vampire women laughed cruelly from the heights.
One of them, with her red hair waving in the wind, folded her wings and nose-dived.
Swish
She easily grabbed a man who was running lagging behind, her claws digging into the wretch's shoulders, and lifted him into the air effortlessly.
In front of the whole town, she sank her fangs into the victim's throat and with a brutal movement of her neck, tore the flesh and the artery.
Blood gushed out, raining over the square, while she lifted her head toward the sky, with her mouth stained crimson, showing an expression of absolute intoxication.
That scene completely shattered the little sanity that remained in the village.
"I-It's them... THEY'RE BACK!"
"RUN! Hide in the church!"
In the midst of absolute chaos, the man in the wide-brimmed hat did not run. He opened his trench coat and took out two repeating crossbows of complex and strange design.
Without hesitating for a second, he aimed at the sky and began to shoot a rain of arrows against the flying figures.
Swoosh Swoosh Swoosh
The arrows broke the air with deadly buzzes, but the vampires' speed was faster, they moved like blurs, dodging the arrows with mocking laughter.
"Van Helsing! It's useless, they don't fear this!" shouted Friar Carl anxiously at his side, covering his head with his arms while looking for where to hide.
"I know, dammit!" growled Van Helsing between his teeth.
While his hands moved with dexterity to change the magazines of his crossbows, his eyes scanned their flight pattern, coldly seeking a single opportunity.
...
From the elevated safety of the stone window, Lief observed the chaos with interest but his attention was totally absorbed by the figure of the man in the hat and trench coat.
Van Helsing.
The legendary killer, the Left Hand of God, the projection of the Archangel Gabriel.
Seeing him in action live and in person was a spectacle that Lief did not expect to enjoy so soon.
"They are herding the people...!"
Anna's scream broke his thoughts.
"Their target isn't the peasants, it's me! They are trying to make me come out!"
Realization hit Anna and without thinking twice, she turned on her heels and ran toward the door, with the suicidal intention of surrendering herself to stop the massacre.
"NO!"
But Velkan was faster and intercepted her halfway, grabbing her by the arms with a desperate force that stopped her run dead.
"Going down now is going directly to death, Anna! It is exactly what they want!"
"And what do you expect me to do?!" she shouted with her voice broken by rage, struggling against her brother's grip. "I can't stay watching how they tear my people to pieces because of me!"
The argument attracted the wrong attention.
Below, Verona, the black-haired one, looked up attracted by the movement in the tower and a smile split her pale face.
With a shrill laugh, she flapped her wings and changed her trajectory, becoming a living missile that shot vertically toward the study's large window.
"Watch out!"
Velkan's roar arrived a fraction of a second late, he pushed Anna violently behind his back and unsheathed his sword.
"Sigh..."
Lief let out a long and annoyed sigh, scratching the nape of his neck.
Originally, his plan was to remain as a spectator and deduce how to use the map to return home without getting involved in drama, but it seemed that fate wanted problems to hit him in the face constantly.
He simply snapped his fingers.
Boom
The air in front of the balcony solidified instantly and Verona, who was coming like a cannonball, crashed against an invisible but impenetrable barrier.
Her whole body deformed from the sudden collision and she was flung backward with violence, spinning out of control, stunned and with her bones crunching, trying desperately to stabilize her broken wings.
Below, in the square, Van Helsing's eagle eyes caught the inexplicable miracle and he didn't question his luck.
"Holy water!" shouted Carl, pointing frantically toward the church entrance. "The church font is full!"
The hunter reacted and rolled on the ground dodging a swipe from Marishka and ran toward the portico of the nearby church.
Without stopping, he submerged the loaded crossbow and a bag of arrows into the stone font.
Zzzzz…
The liquid reacted with the metal of the tips, and bursts of white and hissing steam began to emanate from the arrows.
Van Helsing pivoted on one knee, raising the weapon.
Verona had just regained her balance in the air, shaking her head to clear the daze from the invisible blow.
"Go to hell."
Swish
The arrow cut through the air and sank deep into the center of her chest, piercing the heart.
"AAAAH...!"
The effect of the holy water was immediate.
Her pale skin began to bubble like melted wax, the flesh ulcerated and separated from the bones in seconds, emitting columns of pestilent black smoke.
She struggled, writhing in agony, until her physical form collapsed and exploded into a cloud of ash, dissipating in the wind before touching the ground.
"NOOO!"
The remaining two screeched with pure fury upon feeling her death.
They abandoned their sadistic game, Marishka nose-dived at Van Helsing, while Aleera headed toward the castle.
She didn't go for the window, she simply went through the wall.
Crash
The wall exploded inward when she smashed through the side wall of the study, entering the room wrapped in a shower of debris and dust.
She landed in the center hissing like a viper, with her tattered dress floating around her tense body.
The target was still Anna!
"Die, little bitch! You will pay for this with your blood!" roared Aleera, showing her fangs, and launched herself toward Anna's throat ignoring everything else.
"Don't even think about it!"
Velkan roared, charging at her and delivering a downward slash with all his might, aiming to decapitate her.
Clang
The steel blade bounced off the vampire's skin without leaving even a white scratch, sending a shockwave through Velkan's arms.
Aleera didn't even blink and with a gesture of absolute disdain, waved her hand without looking and hit Velkan in the chest with the force of a horse's kick, lifting him off the ground and sending him flying across the room.
Anna was left alone facing death.
Fear froze her veins, but her Valerious blood was stronger.
With ragged breathing and eyes fixed on the vampire, she pulled a dagger from her boot and adopted a combat stance, ready to sell her life in a last stand.
While she prepared, Lief, without any haste, moved his right hand and, distorting the space around him, pulled a heavy and strange object out of nothingness.
It wasn't a holy sword.
It was a crossbow, but its design was light years ahead of anything a blacksmith of this era could conceive, surpassing even Van Helsing's contraptions.
The body of the weapon was forged in an immaculate and polished white metal, engraved with thousands of microscopic runes that pulsed with a faint blue light, as if it had a heartbeat of its own.
In the center of the mechanism, instead of a channel for arrows, there was a reinforced glass container embedded in the core, inside which a golden liquid flowed slowly.
"Let's see how this baby works..." he murmured, raising the weapon with a single hand and aiming casually at Aleera's head, which was millimeters away from biting Anna.
His index finger closed over the trigger.
!
A sharp hum was heard.
A beam of golden light, condensed until becoming solid matter, shot out from the mouth of the crossbow at a speed faster than a bullet.
Poof!
The beam of light not only hit Aleera, but pierced her skull instantly, vaporizing bone and brain in a fraction of a nanosecond.
Her movements stopped abruptly, her claws remaining suspended a breath away from Anna's skin.
The expression of ferocity and bloodlust on her pale face froze, becoming an empty mask.
The next second, the chain reaction began.
Taking her head as ground zero, the golden light expanded violently throughout her nervous and muscular system like a virus.
Aleera didn't even have time to process her own death or to scream.
Before she could scream, flesh, clothes, and bones dissolved inch by inch in the radiance, disintegrating into millions of particles of golden dust that floated in the air before vanishing into nothingness.
In the devastated study, absolute silence fell.
Anna, still with the dagger raised in a useless defensive posture, and Velkan, who was trying to get up laboriously from among the rubble of the bookshelf, looked at the empty space where a second ago there was an invincible monster with total disbelief.
"..."
It had been an absolute annihilation...
Lief nodded with satisfaction while stroking the cold metal.
'It seems Victor wasn't boasting when he gave me this...'
Below, in the town square, the battle also came to an abrupt end.
Marishka, who was about to launch herself again against the hunter, stopped upon feeling the sudden disappearance of Aleera.
Upon looking toward the tower and not feeling her presence, but only the residual trace of a terrifying energy that she could smell from there, fear hit her.
She understood that now she was the prey.
With a shriek, she flapped her wings frantically and turned around, fleeing at full speed toward the mountains, toward the safety of Dracula's castle, without daring to look back even once.
Van Helsing didn't try to chase her, he knew it was useless.
Instead, he stood up slowly, adjusted his hat, and raised his head to look toward that broken window on the second floor of the castle, frowning deeply.
He had seen the flash.
'What kind of weapon produced that...?' he wondered, feeling an uneasiness.
...
Minutes later, at the castle entrance.
Lief came out accompanied by the Valerious siblings, who were limping slightly but held their heads high. The peasants, who were beginning to come out of their hiding places, looked at Lief with a mixture of awe and adoration.
Van Helsing and Carl approached, but kept a safe distance, directing vigilant glances toward Lief.
"Thank you for saving us again, and for saving my people," Anna said, stopping in front of Lief and looking him in the eyes with a gratitude that went beyond words.
Then, her expression hardened, she turned on her heels, and walked until she was face to face with the man in the hat, her posture radiating authority.
"Who are you?" she demanded. "You brought chaos to my doors and the beasts followed you. What have you come here to do?"
Van Helsing held her gaze without being intimidated, "My name is Van Helsing and by order of the Holy Order of Rome, I have come to hunt and kill Dracula."
________
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