In the great hall of the castle, flames crackled inside the immense stone fireplace.
The fire managed to disperse the cold of the Transylvanian night, but it was totally incapable of dissolving the tension that saturated the air among those present.
Sitting at the head of the oak table, Van Helsing had disassembled his crossbows and was cleaning them with extreme care. He passed an oiled cloth over the metal gears and springs, checking each mechanism for damage.
In front of him, Carl was buried behind a pile of books, turning the pages frantically, murmuring under his breath.
Velkan, for his part, kept himself apart. He was standing by the window, with his hand resting on the hilt of his sword, scrutinizing the darkness of the silent village below.
Finally, Anna appeared and walked toward the center of the hall balancing several ceramic mugs on a tray.
"Drink something, it will help you warm up."
First she stopped next to Van Helsing, leaving a steaming mug of malt beer near his tools, and then walked to where Lief was, who was leaning against a stone pillar, observing the scene with detachment.
Lief accepted the mug with a nod, but didn't bring it to his lips.
His eyes drifted subtly toward the spiral staircase that led to the darkness of the second floor, specifically toward the direction of the study.
His mind wasn't on the beer nor the chatter.
All his attention was fixed on that painting.
He knew what he had to do.
If he managed to solve the problems of this place, he had the absolute certainty that he could use the resonance of that map as a "key" for his return to his own Agency.
"Did the Holy Order really send only you?"
Velkan broke the tension with disbelief, finally turning away from the window to fix his eyes on the hunter with mistrust.
"Is this how Rome dismisses the threat of Dracula?"
"I am enough," Van Helsing replied dryly without even bothering to lift his head, concentrated on removing a speck of dirt from the firing mechanism of his crossbow.
"Enough?"
Velkan let out a bitter laugh, shaking his head as he walked toward the table. "My family has fought against that being for four hundred years, we have paid with countless lives, with the blood of fathers and brothers... On what exactly do you base your belief that you, a solitary mercenary, are 'enough' where an entire lineage has failed?"
"..."
The cleaning rag stopped over the metal.
Van Helsing lifted his head slowly, and his eyes, tired but hard, met the prince's furious gaze.
"I base it on the fact that I am Van Helsing."
The tension between the two thickened, charged with static electricity, about to explode... But fate had other plans.
Boom
A deafening thunder, like the impact of a siege ram, broke the relative tranquility of the castle and shook the stone foundations under their feet.
The heavy double oak door of the main hall was torn from its hinges by a colossal brute force from the outside.
The icy night wind burst into the room, and with it, a huge black shadow materialized in the shattered threshold.
Another werewolf!
Lief, who was still leaning on the pillar, narrowed his eyes evaluating it.
This specimen was visibly more compact and smaller than the one he had pinned to the tree, but what it lacked in size it compensated for with a psychotic instability.
The beast swept the room with its gaze, while thick threads of saliva dripped continuously from its open jaws.
"It's because of Dracula!"
With a tense face, Anna tried to explain, noticing the doubt in Lief's eyes, and added quickly:
"He can create them at will! He uses a method we don't know to turn living people into beasts that only obey his orders, using them as hunting dogs!"
"Really?" Lief nodded slowly, filing the data while observing the monster, "And as I guessed, this reality has some interesting divergences from the movie."
'Movie?'
The foreign word bounced in Anna's mind without meaning, but the survival instinct suppressed any question before it could form on her lips, the werewolf didn't give them even a second more of respite.
With a growl that vibrated in everyone's chest, its powerful hind legs contracted and released violently, propelling its body across the hall like a hairy cannonball, aiming directly at the nearest threat: Van Helsing, who was still sitting at the head of the table.
And the hunter's reaction was at a supernatural speed.
He didn't waste time with the disassembled crossbows; the instant the beast left the ground, he dropped to one side fluidly, sliding his body across the stone floor to dodge the impact.
Simultaneously, his right hand disappeared under the folds of his trench coat and emerged like lightning wielding a circular mechanical contraption.
Buzz...!
A sharp roar, similar to a swarm of wasps, resonated in the hall when he activated the mechanism. The teeth of the circular saw began to spin, flashing with the unmistakable shine of silver.
"Grrr!"
Upon failing its initial jump and landing on the table smashing it, the Werewolf turned and launched a backhand swipe toward the hunter's head.
Van Helsing planted his feet firmly on the ground and raised the spinning saw to intercept the blow.
Clang
A shower of dazzling sparks erupted with the impact, illuminating the room with orange flashes.
The brute force of the blow forced Van Helsing to step back half a pace, but the saw won the exchange, it managed to bite the hard keratin and the skin of the werewolf, opening a deep and smoking wound on the claw.
With black blood splashing the ground, the werewolf howled in pain and fury, and with that its attacks became frenetic.
Its speed increased until its movements became blurs, launching a storm of claws and bites from every possible angle.
But Van Helsing was a wall.
He held the spinning saw with dexterity, responding to everything with calm. He blocked, deflected, and counterattacked with precise and economical movements, without leaving a single fissure in his defense.
The world was reduced to the duel in the center of the hall.
"..."
Velkan observed the deadly dance with his heart hammering violently against his throat, unable to look away.
He considered himself an expert in the art of the sword, educated in the art of war from the cradle, but he knew that when facing those beasts, his sword barely served to gain a few seconds of life.
And yet, this stranger was fighting toe-to-toe against the beast, exchanging blows with a brutality that even seemed to give him a slight advantage.
For his part, Lief observed the show with great interest, ignoring the danger.
Van Helsing's combat skills were certainly impressive, his brute strength, reaction speed, and reflexes were well above the limits of a common human, and added to that equipment, they made him a perfect killing machine for this environment.
The battle didn't take long to reach its breaking point.
Van Helsing detected a gap in the werewolf's frenetic defense and with a grunt of effort, fiercely pushed the electric saw forward to off-balance it and, in a fluid movement, his left hand drew a revolver from his waist.
And without hesitation, he fired three times in a row at point-blank range against the beast's knee.
Bang Bang Bang
The werewolf's left leg collapsed under its own weight, and its body lost balance, falling clumsily forward.
And the hunter gave it no truce, he took advantage of the fall and cut with the saw fiercely toward the exposed neck of the werewolf to decapitate it.
However, just when the spinning teeth were about to bite the throat, a glint shone in the werewolf's eyes.
Surprisingly, it abandoned all resistance and leaving itself as dead weight, used the momentum to roll along the ground, dodging the cut by millimeters.
Quickly it got back up dragging its shattered leg and launched itself desperately against the window on the other side of the hall, crashing through the glass into the darkness outside.
"Damn thing..." Van Helsing growled, ready to give chase.
"Wait!"
Velkan stepped forward quickly and grabbed his arm before he crossed the window.
"Don't kill it yet! Follow it!" he said urgently, looking at the blood on the ground. "If it's wounded and scared, it will seek refuge... It could lead us directly to the hidden entrance of Dracula's lair!"
"..."
Van Helsing stopped, processing the logic. He looked Velkan in the eyes, saw the reason in his strategy, and nodded dryly.
"I'll go with you," Anna added without hesitating for a second, stepping forward while picking up a short sword from one of the decorative suits of armor.
"It's too dangerous, Anna!"
"We've already discussed this and there is no time for debates, I'm going," she cut him off, with an unusually determined attitude.
"..."
Velkan opened his mouth to protest again, but seeing the expression on her face, he understood that stopping her would be harder than killing the werewolf, so finally he could only sigh helplessly and nod.
"I'm going too."
Lief left the beer mug untouched on the table and finally spoke.
The sooner this crisis was resolved, the faster he would return home.
Thus, without any more unnecessary words, the group of five quickly left the castle.
Following the fresh trail of blood and tracks, they ventured into the darkness of the night.
...
The group traversed the thicket of the black forests and crossed mountain paths so steep that a false step would mean a fall into the void, guided solely by the trail of black blood.
Despite dragging a shattered leg, the werewolf possessed a vitality that kept him far ahead of his pursuers; however, his advantage was diminished by Anna's local knowledge, who knew every hidden path and every shortcut in these lands, allowing the group to close the distance without losing the trail.
Finally, the chase ended when the blood trail stopped abruptly in front of a colossal and ruinous structure standing atop a cliff, dominating the valley with a presence much darker than the Valerious home.
The castle was an architectural corpse of black stone, wrapped in an atmosphere of desolation.
"Frankenstein's Castle..." Anna said, breaking the silence. "Legend says a mad scientist performed forbidden experiments here against God's laws, seeking to create life from death."
"Seems the legend has more history than myth," Van Helsing murmured, taking out a collapsible telescope, looking for sentries or traps.
Confirming that the outer perimeter was clear, they circled the castle's flank with extreme care, slipping through until finding a section of collapsed wall through which they infiltrated.
The interior of the castle was plunged in total silence, but it wasn't empty; the air was impregnated with a stench that stung the nose, mixed with the metallic smell of blood.
They advanced through a long hallway, watching their every step, until the corridor opened abruptly revealing a huge experiment hall that looked like a cavern.
In the exact center, there was a deep pit with no visible bottom and suspended over that abyss, they saw the werewolf they had been chasing.
He was tied hand and foot by countless iron chains to a huge platform in the shape of a metal cross.
His bullet wounds had already closed, but in his eyes there was no longer fury, but absolute terror at what was about to happen.
And the worst part wasn't the beast.
Hanging from the vaulted ceiling and covering the walls were thousands upon thousands of membranous and semi-transparent sacs.
They were embryos, resembling eggs that pulsed slightly inside a viscous liquid.
Boom
A deafening thunder shook the castle when natural lightning tore the night sky and struck with precision on the main tower's lightning rod.
The immense electric charge was channeled through cables, descending from the ceiling and converging violently on the metal cross where the lycanthrope was tied.
"Awooo... RAAAAGH!"
The werewolf's body acted as a conduit; under the stimulus of the powerful electric current, its supernatural vitality was forced out.
Currents of bright green energy were violently extracted from its flesh and, channeled through countless glass tubes and conduits, were injected into the thousands of embryos.
Upon receiving the infusion of that vital energy, the army of sacs began to writhe, glow, and expand violently, as if thousands of hearts had begun to beat in unison, ready to hatch.
And at the highest part of the experimental platform, stood Marishka.
The one who had fled cowardly was standing there, radiant and terrible, with a satisfied smile.
"My children... wake up and come out quickly..." she opened her arms toward the pulsating swarm. "Go! Descend upon the valley and turn that miserable village into our new nursery! Eat your fill!"
With her words, hell broke loose.
Crack! Splash!
Thousands of embryos broke open simultaneously.
Countless monster hatchlings, the size of a small child with bat wings and sharp claws, flew out of their prisons screeching with voracious hunger.
They converged in the air forming a black torrent that darkened the ceiling.
Marishka let out a high-pitched shriek and that living cloud composed of hellish spawn immediately changed direction, exiting through the large openings of the tower to fly like a biblical plague toward the defenseless village at the foot of the mountain.
________
Time: If you're craving more (and I know you are!), I have just what you need. On my Patreon, you'll find exclusive chapters. Join our community and be the first to discover what happens next!
👉 [patreon.com/Athome790]
Your support fuels me. Thank you for the support! đź’–