Immortality

***
Fourteen

His dreams were getting darker.

This time he remembered a vast black wood, full of long branches that clawed at him, snagging in his hair and scoring lines into the leather of his coat. He bled from a scratch above his eyes that made his vision swim in sickly red. And there was something, *something* there... he could feel it even if he couldn't see it. When he woke that was what he remembered, and nothing more.

There was bright sunlight streaming in through the unshaded window and he was warmed by it into waking. He couldn't remember the last time he'd felt that, or even seen the sunlight; the days since he'd arrived in London had been so very dark. He lay there, smiling softly to himself as he revelled in it, until at last he jerked awake; his mind had wandered and he'd wondered about the time. He pulled his pocket watch from the top of the cabinet beside the bed, and, after rubbing at his eyes, found that it was very close to eleven o'clock.

He scrambled from the bed and dressed quickly, reattaching his watch to his waistcoat and holstering his pistol. Pulling on his coat he left the room and startled the surly lady innkeeper on the stairs, demanding to know where his brother was. At first she suggested that he calm down and take some breakfast, but she was soon persuaded to tell him what she knew, and he headed off out of the inn, stalking off toward the forest. He didn't get far from the village before he found Abraham walking back in the opposite direction, Carl at his side.

"Ah, Gabriel, it would seem that you have risen at last," said Abraham, smiling brightly and quite obviously ignoring Gabriel's rather murderous look. Carl didn't, however; he was standing by the elder Van Helsing and looking rather small, avoiding his eyes.

"Why did you let me sleep so late?" he demanded, his tone sounding a little ridiculous even to himself, considering he was so terribly upset over a few extra hours of sleep, but he stubbornly did not cease to glare.

"It seemed that you could do with the rest," Abraham said with a shrug. "We decided to let you sleep, and if you were not awake by the time that we returned, we would have woken you."

The answer should have appeased him; it rather did, in point of fact, but the glare abated only a little as he turned to walk with them back to the village. Carl and Abraham continued to converse without him in a language that he didn't speak but knew was Latin, right up until they reached the door of the inn. Then Carl excused himself and slipped off to his room with a book that Abraham gave to him, produced from the inside pocket of his large dark overcoat.

"What did you give him?" Gabriel asked as soon as Carl was gone, leaning back against the bar while Abraham helped himself to two large mugs of ale.

"A book," he replied, passing him a mug then sipping from his own, looking at him from over the brim. "One of my diaries if you really do want to know, as your friar friend seems to be intrigued by my code and has a strange desire to crack it. But I feel this is not the question that you want to ask."

Gabriel shook his head slowly. "I want you to tell me about my past," he said.

"Then come and sit down with me."

They walked across the room, hanging up their coats and hats and settling down in the worn, high-backed chairs by the fire. Abraham took another sip from his mug and then rested it against his knee; Gabriel did the same but didn't really taste it.

"I remember a time when we were living in France," Abraham said slowly, leaning back into his chair. "It was a small village and I cannot now recall the name of it, but there we lived for a long time, and I think we were quite happy. We had land which we worked and from which we lived, and I had my books. We kept the villagers safe from that which would have harmed them. I do not think that our life there could have lasted, but we were never to test its longevity as the Church called on us, as they always have.

"I had been expecting the call for some time, and was almost relieved to receive it, as were you, despite our happy lives there. They had promised that they would call just one last time and then we would be free of it. So we left our village and our home and went into the east, to do this one last thing in the name of God and His Church.

"We were away in that land for years, defending it from an enemy of another faith who we were told would have taken the country from the Church. We fought in many battles, you and I, though in time we grew apart. You were always the man of action of we two brothers, and I the scholar; I did fight, of course, but I hung back, I watched you fight and I chronicles your deeds in my diaries, and your great friendship with a man who led a portion of that country's army. He was a prince and a great man, who served God without question. You two were never to be seen one without the other, even upon the battlefield. Until that last day.

"He renounced God, though I never knew why and I'm not sure that you did, either. After the greatest, the bloodiest and longest lasting of all of his campaigns the prince fell to his knees and renounced God. For that you killed him; I watched as you thrust your sword through his heart, in your rage. You killed your greatest friend, your dearest, only friend, that day on that field, and we returned to Rome."

Gabriel frowned. None of it seemed familiar, not a word of it, though Abraham had seemed sincere enough. "So why I don't I remember?"

Abraham smiled the smallest of small, sad smiles. "Because you wanted to forget," he said. "The weight of what you had done was almost too much to bear. And when we learned of what he had become once you had struck him down, you asked, you *prayed*, to forget. Your prayer was answered. What you did not count upon, my brother, is that you would feel a burning need to remember, to strive to regain what you had lost, and that every time that your memory was restored, you would pray again to forget."

That hardly made sense. "Just because of that friend?"

"That was the last of many bloody deeds which you committed for the Church, and perhaps to you the worst of them. But I think you wished to forget them all."

"And that friend?" he said, with a terrible shiver of foreboding. "He was Dracula."

Abraham nodded, and then lifted his ale. Gabriel did the same, feeling that he needed it to steel his nerves.

"The Church had sworn that we would be free of our long obligation after that war," Abraham continued then, in a low voice, sadly. "But when we learned of Dracula's demonic resurrection, I knew that we must stay and serve a little longer. You see, Gabriel - when we killed him, when *you* killed him for the first time, he became our responsibility. Over the years I lost you, lost track of where you were, and thought perhaps that you would regain your memory. A few times there were that you did and you sought me out but always without a trace you vanished before we could leave together, and you again would lose your memory and lose yourself in the world. This time I could not wait for you to remember I learned that you were at work for the Church, for the Vatican, and I heard that you and Dracula had crossed paths again at last. I knew he would not be gone from the earth for a long, long time, and so I sent Van Varenberg to you, his one last service before he could rest at long last. I came here, to this place where it began and where it must end. I thought perhaps I should tell you to try scattering his ashes this time."

Gabriel remained silent. The story made such sense to him but he had no memory of it. What Abraham had told him fit with all he knew and with what Dracula himself had attempted to tell him. He almost believed it then, sitting there face to face with Abraham Van Helsing, the man who claimed to be his brother, but then he shook his head and wondered how he could have been so deceived. How could he trust a man that he'd known for less than a day? How could he believe in that story, seeing Abraham there perhaps fifty years old or more but certainly no veteran of the 15th century. It was ridiculous. Did he really think that he'd lived for over four hundred years and *asked* to lose his memory?

"I don't believe you," he said, and stood. "I don't."

"Every word is true, on my honour. On the honour of our family."

But Gabriel shook his head and turned, and stumbled. He felt the inn, not caring if he were followed or not because he could outrun them, he could, because there was all that anger and disappointment built up inside him just itching to be released, to pump through his blood and his muscles as he ran without even knowing where he was running to. It didn't matter. He just ran.

And then he stopped. He was back by the edge of the village, not far from the edge of the woods, his boots caked in snow and his coat hanging bac the the inn. For a start as he sat there the cold didn't bother him, instead clearing his mind so that he could think, dissect their strange conversation and feel angry again. It was maddening that it all felt so true, that Abraham could be so convincing a liar as to make him almost believe that they were both of them over four hundred years old when that was patently absurd. And that made him think of Dorian who had deceived him also, and so skilfully. He felt a fool, that he could be so easily tricked into believing the tales of men he barely knew.

He sat on a tree stump with his head in his hands, thinking how much simpler life had seemed when he had no brother, when Dorian Gray had not existed and all that he'd had was his work. All across Europe they called him a murderer, and though that stung him he knew where he stood, being used as he was by the Church to fight whatever evil in their name. He was accustomed to manipulation from Jinette and the others, but this was a whole new world to him. He wasn't sure that he liked it.

Time passed and he grew cold sitting in the clear and freezing air, so he rose and made his way into the village. It reminded him of Anna's village, across the river, with its strangely shaped houses and its muddy street, it's inhabitants who dressed in the same manner and regarded him with the same guarded suspicion if not with the pitchforks. From outside the small village hall, between the buildings, he could see the tallest tower of Castle Frankenstein. He shivered and ducked inside the church to escape the cold.

There was no priest. He learned from the boy who was halfway up a long ladder cleaning the windows that the old priest had died, taken by Dracula's brides, and had never been replaced. Now all they had as the large Latin Bible and a storekeeper who understood enough to read it on a Sunday. The story was oddly disheartening. He took a pew and sat there, trying not to think about it.

He wished that he hadn't come. He wished that he'd told Van... that infuriating man in London to leave and hadn't taken the letter. He wished he'd not set foot into France, to Paris, to that masquerade ball. He wished he'd never met Dorian Gray or Abraham Van Helsing, and most of all he wished, now that he had done all of that, that he could leave. But wished helped nothing. He was there to finish the job that he'd started, with Carl and Anna Valerious. Dracula had to die, but that didn't preclude a short while longer sitting in the church, dwelling on facts he couldn't change.

It was a small church, quite old and possibly the only building in the village made from stone. There were candles lit about the room that cast eerie shadows through it, much like he'd seen in every church to which he'd paid a visit. He sighed deeply and went forward, dipping to cross himself before veering off to the side and lighting two candles - one for Anna and one for her brother Velkan. He hoped that heaven kept her safe so she would never have to know they'd failed. And then he sat back down.

Carl came. The doors opened and the candle flickered in the rush of air but remained alight; Carl came up the aisle and stood beside him, playing with his rosary in his hands. Finally, though he didn't feel he wanted to, he looked up.

"Is there something I can do for you, Carl?" he asked, raising his eyebrows, wishing that he'd been left alone though simultaneously glad of the company.

"Come back to the inn," Carl said, giving him a terriconcconcerned look. "I'm not going to ask what it was that your brother said to you..."

"Do I even know that he's my brother?"

Carl frowned and otherwise completely ignored the question. "I'm not going to say that I don't want to know because I do, but considering the situation I do think it's best that you come back to the inn, Van Helsing."

Carl was using his authoritative tone that almost made Gabriel smile. "Why, exactly?"

"Because we still need to discuss how exactly we plan to kill Dracula."

Oh, Carl had him there; he sighed melodramatically and pulled himself up from the pew that was, admittedly, becoming quite uncomfortable. Carl smiled a smug, satisfied smile, and they left the church together.

The inn lay almost opposite the church and took roughly thirty seconds to walk to across the square; they stepped inside, stamped off most of the snow from their feet and then Carl went over to the table there in the otherwise completely deserted room at which Abraham was sitting. Reluctantly, Gabriel joined them.

They talked. Soon Gabriel had put aside his reservations and the three of them sat there attempting to hammer out a plan; they knew from Gabriel's first-hand experience that stakes and crucifixes had little effect, and Anna had told him that holy water had also failed. It seemed that shooting and burning were also quite without point, so what that left them with was their previous plan, which had the unfortunate flaw of meaning that one of them would have to be bitten by a werewolf, and Dracula probably did not have a vast quantity of syringes full of antidote just lying around in his castle. Also, where exactly were they to find a werewolf, and how could they have one of them bitten and infected but not killed? It was a terrible, terrible plan.

Then, after much discussion and hot stew and bread brought to them by the innkeeper, Abraham formed a new plan.

"We dismember him," he said.

Gabriel frowned. "And?"

"And we chop him up. Then we burn him, and divide up his ashes into, perhaps, six parts. We each of us take with us two parts and scatter them in two different locations; in that way he will be unable to return."

It was really quite stunning in its simplicity; they didn't really need to kill him at all, just to keep him from ever returning. Of course, it did have one very obvious flaw.

"You make it sound so simple," Gabriel said.

Abraham shrugged, sipping his wine. "It *is* simple," he said. "However there is a strong possibility that we all shall die before we even have the opportunity to swing a sword."

"And this is a *good* plan?"

Both of the Van Helsings turned to look at Carl. "Unless you want to be bitten by a werewolf or let the spawn of Satan walk the earth affronting God for all eternity."

"Ah." Carl smiled sheepishly. "Does this plan, err, require my presence, as it were?"

Gabriel almost rolled his eyes and shared a look with Abraham before he could help himself. Considering all that Carl had done on their previous visit... "Yes, Carl, you can stay here," he said.

And so it was decided; perhaps it was not a foolproof plan - not by any means, but it was the best they knew, and so the would march right up to Castle Dracula and attempt to hack him limb from limb then burn him to ashes. Something was bound to go wrong, of course, but they did have to try. Even if the weight of a murder dating back four hundred years was *not* on him, Dracula was still very much his responsibility. In the morning, they would leave for the last house of the Valerious family, and the gateway to Dracula's castle.

Abraham and Carl both retired after dinner, but Gabriel, who had slept so long the previous night, felt he couldn't sleep. He sat up by the fire and thought. Soon, he hoped, the business of Dracula's extermination would be done with, and then he would return to London, his home and his bed. He was tired; tired of the work and the Church, of the wanted posters and being labelled a murderer when the priests in the Vatican assured him that what he did was God's work. He just wanted to rest. Perhaps soon he would.

***