VAN HELSING - A Short Story

Part Two, Chapter Eleven: The Vampire Prince

AMBRA 

My eyesight was returning and I could still feel the hot spot that the Black Fairy had touched a second before. But it felt like it had lasted ages. The dream, I mean. Well, not dream but... I actually did not know what she had shown me. Memories? The past?

"Neither one of these options excludes the other, my child. You were certainly dreaming while I was showing you the memories of the past. So in a sense, you are right with everything."

I spun my head around to face the Black Fairy but that proved to be a mistake for I felt my eyesight tunnel and me getting a quite dizzy for a short while.

"Don't worry, it's going to go away soon."

She reassured me from the side. I took a moment to compose myself, now able to feel the sheets covering my body and the soft mattress underneath it.

I tried anew and turned my head to face the Black Fairy, this time slowly. But the Black Fairy was not alone and my eyes grew as I realized who was sitting beside her.

"Lisa Whitley..."

I breathed and made the now older but still equally beautiful woman smile.

"Please sweetie, I ain't the queen!-"

Yet she could not even finish her thought before I already cut into her words.

"What happened to the child? Where did you bring it?"

I asked only those two of my million questions that were sailing in my head without direction and with even less of a destination. Lisa just chuckled and switched her legs, having crossed the left one over her right one.

"That's why I'm here. Black called me a couple of days ago. And here I am now, ready to tell you the story personally. I think this is more comfortable than having everything visually printed into your brain..."

I gave out a reassuring grunt and threw her a smile of my own. It felt odd and magical to have the woman sitting next to me that I had followed in a dream as of now.

As I remained silent, Lisa finally decided to begin with the story that I was more than eager to hear finished. I propped myself up to lean against the pillow that I pressed between the wall and my back.

"...To start things off, it might be wise to mention that this baby is the only reason that you are even involved in this. If I had not managed to save it and Camille had not given her life's energy for it to live, you never would have gotten here..."

And that could mean only one single thing. And thinking of it, she looked- I mean he looked quite like his mother. The same narrow eyes although their colour was different, hers being dark blue. However this only made perfect sense. I would not know what the purpose would be of being told this story.

"Johann..."

I cut into her sentence and both women just nodded slowly. They were the quintessence of "beauty does not age", I realized, the longer I looked at them. Both of them had aged like fine wine and I am sure that they would receive many admirers.

"Precisely..."

Lisa continued and swallowed audibly.

"...but we have to ask you not to tell him. Not just yet. There are matters at stake here that are far more weighing than this. It does not help that the father who did not want him is sitting with us in the council. And is now my husband."

Her sentence began to fade, the further she spoke. Understandably. I noticed my jaw dropping to my chest without control upon this information. In this moment, I really felt miserable and irate that my perfectly normal and enjoyable life turned out to become this circus. This freak show. And I was caught in the middle of it all.