Immortality

***
Eight

The journey to Rome was long and tiring, train travel broken at intervals by stretches of travel by coach due to the January snow. Gabriel stared from the window in the day, his eyes skirting over the snow-swept countryside of Germany, the white hills and gloomy, treacherous rivers that reminded him not a little of his time in Transylvania. Perhaps there was more to it, more than recollection that was so near in his past, but the thoughts were shadowy and eluded his grasp, as ever. He leant back in his seat, and let it go.

Then, at night, he studied the book. He thought some words seemed familiar, though whether that was from merely wishful thinking or a true recollection was unsure. He stared at it, the bold hand, the odd sketchy, stylised drawing, as if at any moment some memory he had would be unlocked and bring it all into clarity. That didn't happen.

He slept little and infrequently, dozing off in the darkness when he hadn't the view to keep him from sleep and his ignorance of the book's contents had driven him from it, if only temporarily. And when he slept he dreamed, though then he woke he remembered nothing but a bone-deep sense of dread. Still, somehow he knew that these were not his ordinary dreams, his nightmares that though horrific he had grown to tolerate. These dreams were something new and different, not glimpses of a past that he could not have lived but set firmly in the present. He knew that, unsure how it was that he knew.

Dorian said little from the moment they first boarded the train in Berlin. He seemed absorbed in his book, a leather-bound volume that he had produced as if from nowhere, and though curious, Gabriel refrained from asking its title. He spoke to Dorian as little as possible, again unsure aswhy;why; perhaps it was that he was more accustomed to keeping his own company, perhaps the fact that his companion seemed to intent on his reading. Or perhaps it was due to those moments when Gabriel gazed from the window but saw Dorian's reflection in the glass, and that he was watching him. The look on his face was unsettling.

They arrived in Rome by carriage and took rooms in a small lodging house that seemed almost the twin of the place where they had spent the night back in Berlin, except for the owner's Italian accent. It was late and after he and Dorian had said a strained goodnight, he stripped and crawled beneath the covers of the dusty-smelling bed. He fell into a fitful sleep from which he woke some hours later, feeling far from refreshed.

He washed and dressed in the same crumpled clothes he'd been wearing for days; he took a look in the full-length mirror that was attached to the back of the door and almost groaned at his appearance; he wasn't a vain man by anyone's standards, but he looked just as rough around the edges as he felt. He ran his hand over his prickly three-day beard, tapped his hat down onto his head and left the room to find Dorian.

Conversely, Dorian looked perfect. His suit was impossibly crisp and pressed, not a hair out of place, his goatee neatly trimmed. He smiled vaguely as he answered his door and saw Gabriel, but said nothing of his appearance. Gabriel was somewhat glad, as had he spoken just one word he was not convinced that he could have kept his fist from his jaw.

They ate a brief breakfast in a small café in a wretched silence. Gabriel felt that he should have spoken but he had no words to say, though Dorian seemed perfectly at ease, watching him over the brim of his coffee cup. The placid look on his face as he did so was innocent enough, but there was something lingered in his eyes that ruined Gabriel's appetite entirely, made him feel edgy, almost anxious. He wished that he'd left him in Berlin. He couldn't imagine having left without him.

When he left for the Vatican, Dorian didn't go with him; he said something wholly suspect about having never been to Rome and wanting to see the sights while he had the opportunity. They made plans to meet later in the day and they he vanished into the city. Gabriel on the other hand had seen the sights, and headed straight for the Vatican.

He was met there by a bishop who admonished him soundly for having left no forwarding address when he'd left London. Apparently the Church frowned upon its agents going incommunicado and turning up weeks later without even showing the courtesy of a false explanation. Gabriel suspected that they just liked to keep an eye on him, as if he were their prodigal son or some kind of strange pet. He might have been a stray they'd taken in, but he was no one's pet.

Following his worryingly long lecture on the absolute necessity of maintaining contact with his superiors in Rome, he was shown in to Cardinal Jinette. He was sitting at a large, antique desk, surrounded by papers and books in large piles, somehow seeming serene despite it all. Perhaps his serenity had something to do wit his surroundings, the vibrant frescoes that covered the walls, the finely carved furniture, the crucifixes and rosaries and objects of faith that seemed to litter every flat surface in the room. He seemed so much a part of that room, also, sitting there blending in with no conscious effort, as though he were a mere extension of the décor, hard at work in its midst. Van Helsing coughed loudly, and the cardinal looked up from his papers.

"You wanted to see me?"

Jinette removed his spectacles from the bridge of his nose and placed them on the desk as he looked Gabriel up and down, obviously just hemming in a disappointing tut. "Yes, quite, Van Helsing. I assume that Bishop Laverne has already... *spoken* to you." Gabriel nodded, his look communicating his distaste. "Ah. Well, come in, sit down."

He strode across the wide room, his footfalls echoing from the high ceiling, and took a seat on the high-backed chair that sat opposite the cardinal across his desk.

"We have a situation, Van Helsing," said Jinette, leaning forward in his seat, his hands with their steepled fingers resting on the edg the the large wooden desk. "For almost a week now we have been attempting to contact you, though we found you missing from you home in London. Of course," he waved his hand dismissively before returning it to its previous position, "Laverne has already spoken to you about *that*." He leant back and rested his hands on the arms of his chair; Gabriel watched him watching him. "We would, naturally, have sent someone in your place, but this is quite *your* situation. It seems that..." He paused, probably for dramatic effect. "Dracula has risen."

Gabriel stared at him for a long moment from under his eyebrows, his chin tilted down toward his chest. His fingers clamped down on the brim of his hat that he held in his lap. "I killed Dracula," he said, not quite through his teeth.

"Obviously you did not kill him quite as thoroughly as we were led to believe." The cardinal sighed and moved to rest his hands on his desk once more. "You're to leave for Transylvania with all haste," he said. "Take Carl, and whatever else you might need. And Van Helsing?" Gabriel stopped; he'd risen from his seat while the cardinal was talking and started to pull on his coat. "Kill him permanently this time."

Gabriel gave a momentary sarcastic smile then showed himself to the door.

He knew his way easily to the laboratories of the research department and strode there down the long, draughty stone corridors with his usual purpose and pace. It was almost unbelievable to think that Dracula wasn't exactly quite as dead as he'd thought him; apparently narrowly missing becoming a permanent werewolf had been in vain, and seeing the count turn to ash at his bite had not been quite the sign of death. Of course he'd been dead to begin with; perhaps that was the problem.

The Vatican was never really meant to see a winter; it was beautiful and warm during the summer months, under blue and cloudless skies, but in the winter it was gloomy, even more sombre for the grey skies and immanent rain. Wind howled in the courtyards and small, stinging raindrops spattered against the stained glass of the windows. Van Helsing turned up the collar of his woollen coat and walked a little faster. He was quite dissatisfied with the chill he felt and his uncomfortable, too-thin clothing; he vowed to change into his more familiar attire when he returned to the hotel and to hell with convention. Good tailoring would hardly help hn Trn Transylvania, after all.

He pushed open the heavy wooden door and stepped into the Vatican's research lab. The place was just as he remembered it, because it never changed; men bustbusibusily about the chamber, toying with their new devices, tinkering with old ones. He walked amongst them, completely ignored, breathing in the warm air scented with a thousand smells from every corner of the earth, some noxious and some quite as delicate as the jasmine scent of Cardinal Jinette's office. And there was Carl, in his peculiar headgear, staring at the mechanisms of his impressive automatic crossbow.

Gabriel leant against the long, disorganised table at which Carl was, as usual, working, and waited. Then Carl looked up, looked straight at him through his magnifying lenses, and very nearly fell right over on the floor.

"Oh my, Van Helsing, you did give me a fright!" he said, pulling off his odd headgear and discarding it on the table as Gabriel looked on, his arms crossed over his chest and a distracted almost-smirk on his face. "You look terrible, you know. And that suit doesn't suit you at all."

"Well thanks, Carl," he said not particularly offended since he knew it was true. "Get your things; we're leaving."

But Carl had apparently anticipated this and was already tipping silver crucifixes and bottles of holy water into a large leather bag. He looked up for a moment and handed Gabriel the crossbow. "Just like old times, eh?"

Gabriel somehow refrained from rolling his eyes. "We came back not even a month ago, both of us almost having died..." He paused and Carl looked at him, his regret at having brought up the subject almost palpable. "I'll see you outside, Carl." He walked away and didn't look back.

Outside the building it was cold, completely chilling; Gabriel leant back against a cold stone wall and shuddered bodily, though whether from the chill wind blowing across the square or his memories, he was uncertain. He had a picture in his mind of Anna Valerious, so alive and courageous, the last of her family. Now, because of him, she was dead.

He stared out across the square, remembering how he'd burnt what was left of her, letting her ashes scatter to the sea. He felt sure that was what she would have wanted. For that, at least, she could not reproach him.

Carl left the building and staggered over to him under the weight of his things. Van Helsing too the bag of equipment and Carl gave him a smile that seemed at once grateful and apologetic. They hailed a carriage and stepped up into it, directing the driver to the Piazza di Spagna.

As they pulled away, Carl chattering a mile a minute, obviously glad to be back in the field despite all that had happened, something in the square caught Gabriel's eye; She was dressed in red and her dark eyes were pleading. But before he could shout out to her, the coach had moved on. He looked back, but she was gone.

***