Chapter Text
Chapter 1
The Task
The present
“Dad has got something for you again”, were the words that Lenny greeted you with as you dragged your feet across the Belmont mansion’s doorstep.
“Great”, you replied sarcastically and flopped down onto the nearest couch in the ostentatious foyer.
It felt as if the air from 1888 London was still sitting heavily inside your lungs, but the great Reynard Belmont had another mission for you.
Again.
Fuck, you were tired.
“You’re lucky, you know”, Lenny pointed out and sat down next to you, slouching into the cushions like a petulant child, despite the fact that there were only 8 months between the both of you.
“Oh, am I now?”, you yawned, not even bothering to hide your opened mouth behind your hand.
“At least you get to do something”, Lenny kicked against the fluffy carpet with golden thread in front of the couch in frustration.
The carpet that was probably worth more than all the furniture in your tiny apartment.
The Belmonts had really been lucky over the last century.
Which had also led to the entire vampire situation being at least somewhat under control.
At least in the Western world. As far as you knew, no one really cared what happened to the poor people at the edge of the world, whose only fault was to have been born in the wrong place or the wrong time.
Just the way it always was.
Hence, Leonard Belmont’s stinky attitude.
He was a perfectly well-trained vampire hunter with too little to do.
Meanwhile, you were a terribly under-equipped person with the wrong set of genes.
“Ah boo-hoo”, you made mockingly and stuck your tongue out towards him when he sent you a glare.
It was a good thing that he had become your best friend over the last couple of years of training together – or rather, being trained by him – and enduring Reynard’s many rage fits and disappointed speeches.
Otherwise, he might have kicked your ass about right now.
“There you are”, Reynard’s deep and serious voice travelled down the huge winding staircase to your left all of a sudden. “Come up now, you have work to do. And Leonard, stop slouching.”
______________________
Reynard Belmont had found you about five years ago, at the tender age of twenty-one, after you had gotten a thorough health check before being able to donate blood and the likes.
You had been in college and seriously low on cash, hence the selling – um, donating – of bodily fluids and stuff like that.
Reynard had come after you because of a suspicion. And, a couple of tests later, which he persuaded you into with some colourful lies, you might add, his suspicion had been confirmed.
That you had been born with a specific gene defect that allowed for you to travel through time.
Which was an ability he was terribly in need of, apparently. Since the current vampire situation was so well in hand – at least from the human view on things – the vampires had tried to get creative in the last couple of decades.
Their truly great times had passed: the times of Dracula, Carmilla of Styria and even Erzsebet Bartory. At the low point they were at right now, there wasn’t much perspective for the future.
So, they looked into the past.
Additionally, vampires had one more thing on their side: immortal magicians and mages.
It had taken them far less time to figure out the spells to mess with the fabric of time.
Unfortunately, the gene-pool of a turned vampire also didn’t seem to change.
Ergo: time-travelling vampires and other creatures with the goal to bring back the past – or rather, change the past in a way that made the present more to their liking and favour.
And against all that stood the mighty, ancient Belmont family… and you.
While Reynard was always on the look-out for more time-travellers, they were hard to come by these days.
Vampires were always trying to turn them into one of them – and thereby to their own side – or just kill them. That way, they would be useless to Reynard as well.
In all honesty, you had no idea why you were the one who was still alive.
When Reynard had brought you into his family at twenty-one years old, he had already mourned the fact that it was too late. In his eyes, you would never become the warrior you could have been.
The warrior his son Leonard was.
There was too much to do and too little time to prepare you. The head of the Belmont family had had a choice to make: use most of the time he had in-between missions to educate you in the most basic forms of magic you could muster and all the necessary knowledge on history and cultures past or… train you into being a fighter.
After the first couple of training sessions, the choice had been made for him: You had no natural pre-disposition to be a warrior. You weren’t really fit, you weren’t strong, you were lacking the balance and… everything, basically, according to Reynard’s rant. Leonard still tried to train you the best he could, mostly in self-defence. Against another human, you might have even stood a chance, but against a vampire? A night creature? Probably not.
Adding to that, you also lacked a natural pre-disposition in magic. You could only muster the most basic forms of spell-work.
Hide your scent for a while.
Push an enemy away a little with a shock wave.
Stuff like that.
There were only three things on your side: you were a pretty amazing shot – even with the ancient-ass guns Reynard made you train with.
You could remember pretty much anything they threw at you: dates, places, events. History and languages had always been a strong suit of yours.
And you were in no shape or form lacking perseverance.
You had absolutely no interest in dying in some ditch somewhere, in the trenches of the first world war or on a pyre in the seventeenth century.
On top of that, you had no interest in allowing your present to be turned into some kind of vampire euphoria.
Which was how survival had become one of your specialities.
____________________________________
“So, where to?”, you asked while staring around Reynard’s stuffy study.
Sadly, as far as you knew, this was the only room inside this mansion – besides Leonard’s – that actually looked lived in.
Lenny was sitting in a chair next to yours, on the opposite side of his father’s desk.
Reynard’s nose had wrinkled when his son had followed you upstairs, but he hadn’t said anything about it. He had learned years ago that fostering your friendship with his son worked in his favour more times than not.
More than once had you been tempted to quit this fucking job. Good thing that the Belmont family was paying you rather well – far better than any job you would have gotten with your mid-par college degree.
Even better that Leonard was – despite all his differences with his father – an idealist at heart and truly believed in his family’s calling.
Whenever you would come back from a job exhausted, scared shitless and ready to throw everything away, he patched you up, calmed you and reassured you that you were fighting for all of humanity.
Making the world better one day at a time.
“Paris, January of 1793”, Reynard finally replied. There was a tenseness to his stance that you didn’t like at all.
“Right into the revolution?”, you grinned at Lenny. “That must be killing you.”
Lenny had a thing for radical changes in history. He found them to be fascinating.
Probably wishful thinking for the day he would finally be able to stand up to his father and the century-old conventions pushing down on his shoulders.
Right now, however, he wasn’t your best friend Lenny, he was Leonard Trevor Belmont, the dutiful son of Reynard Belmont.
“What is the mission?”, he asked, instead of replying anything to your teasing.
Reynard let out a deep sigh that caused your skin to crawl. First his tense stance, now this.
“You have to stop one of the messiah’s vampires from turning Marie Antoinette into a vampire.”
The arms of the wooden chair creaked as you dug your nails into the material. “You want me to go directly toe-to-toe with a vampire? With one of Erzsebeth’s vampires? Why not just shoot me right here, save the mage the trouble of sending me back?”
“According to our records, Richter Belmont should be in Paris around the same time. You can convince him to help you.”
“Oh, yeah, right”, you spat. “Because that went over so well the last time.”
Niklaus Belmont – Russia 1895 – had not been amused by some snarky time-traveller with little manners (according to him) practically demanding his help.
“If Marie Antoinette is turned, the French Revolution will never play out the way it did”, Reynard elaborated. “It would fundamentally change the present as we know it. When you come back – if you come back – most of us might not even exist. Even you might not exist. Changing your own past would be an extremely painful experience and result in your death.”
A defeated breath left you when you leant back in your chair.
Always the same argument. Always the same fucking successful argument.
“Marie Antoinette was executed in October of 1793”, Lenny pointed out carefully. “What is to stop the vampires from turning the queen somewhere between January and then?”
“Once Richter and Alucard have crushed Erzsebeth’s rising, there will be no one left with any intent or reason to save Antoinette”, Renard pointed out. “The only problem is that the both of them don’t know to keep an eye out for the queen as well. Once they know, the job is practically done. This is more of a messenger mission than a fighting one and –”
“Hang on”, you interrupted and sat up straight again. “We talked about this, after last time. No more sending me out to make sure other people die.”
Two weeks ago, you had come back from London, 1888.
Where you had made sure that Jack the Ripper wasn’t caught after his second victim. Making sure that more women were tortured, mutilated and killed.
You still couldn’t get rid of the bitter taste in your mouth at the thought.
“And what choice do you have?”, Renard asked, lifting an arrogant brow.
Smug bastard.
He didn’t have to reiterate his speech of the world as you knew it most likely ending if you didn’t see this through.
As he had said.
You didn’t have a choice.
______________________________
“You can’t give me anything automatic?”, you asked sceptically when Lenny tugged the muzzleloader pistol into your belt.
“You know the rules. If you lose something in the past that doesn’t belong there, everything will be for nothing anyway.”
“Time-traveller 101, yeah, I know”, you mumbled petulantly.
It made sense and you had heard the argument a thousand times before.
Lenny squeezed your arm and you gave him a weak smile, knowing full well that it wasn’t his fault.
That you had to go on another mission to make sure that someone died.
That it had happened again today.
You had felt it before, once or twice a year. This tingling on the back of your neck. As if someone – or something – was watching you. It had been there ever since you had been a kid.
Back then, your parents had written it off to the over-imaginative mind of a child.
In your teenage years you had actually been tested once, for paranoia and schizophrenia, but nothing had come of it.
Since joining the Belmonts’… mission, it had gotten worse every year.
Nowadays, you felt it at least once every two weeks.
When you had mentioned it to Lenny, he had claimed that it was normal. To always feel this unease, knowing what lurked out there, in the dark.
But why had you felt it since you had been a child?
“It’ll be alright”, Lenny pulled you from your thoughts. “Just like dad said. You’re a messenger this time, nothing more. Nothing big.”
_______________________
The mage’s spell felt the same way it always did. There was some comfort in that, at least.
The strange tugging inside your stomach, as if you were perched on the very edge of a rollercoaster.
The tingling and excitement that accompanied the weightlessness of falling down.
Of being trapped – even if just for a few split seconds – in a space without the constrictions of time, or earth and whatever came with it.
All too soon it was over and there you stood.
On the outskirts of Paris.
1793.
_______________________
1793
Nothing big, you remembered Lenny’s words derogatorily as you watched in mild horror when the king’s head dropped into the woven basket at the bottom of the guillotine.
This was a feeling that never changed.
This strange dysphoria between knowing something was about to happen as a distant event and actually seeing it.
Being there to feel the rowdy mood of the crowd. To listen to their shouts. To smell their sweat.
To see the fear in someone’s eyes.
Some stories were tragic because they didn’t have to end that way.
All the stories that you got to witness were tragic because they were always meant to end that way. That was why you were here, after all.
To make sure that this very same man’s wife would be standing in the same spot, only months later.
To doom someone else to death.
Just because it was meant to be this way.
Who decides?, you wondered for the thousandth time, but pushed those thoughts aside.
They never led to a good place.
Instead you ascribed the sudden discomfort you felt towards the tightness of the shirt you were wearing, the stiffness of its collar and the embroidered vest that had been neatly buttoned down on top and stuffed with a cravat – almost lovingly – by Lenny… about 230 years from now.
Somewhere in the last five years, the irony of these things had gotten lost on you.
Instead of dwelling, you rightened your three-pointed hat and trudged on.
Like this, with your hair and face hidden beneath the hat, wearing trousers and a currently very fashionable waistcoat, anyone who saw you would guess that you were some rich boy, at least as long as you kept your face down.
Which was just how you liked it.
Survival instinct and all.
No reason to risk being burned as a witch or stoned as a woman of too many liberties at the dawn of enlightenment.
Walking along the Seine beneath the shade of the pretty trees provided you with some calm after Louis XVI’s execution. Soon, you would start to ask around for the Temple, the last prison of the royal family.
Try to scout the area… check whether vampires had already been there or were close.
You were so lost in your thoughts that you didn’t even notice the dark-skinned, distraught girl or the young man clad in blue beside her.
What did cause you to stop in your tracks was this sensation… this familiar crawling at the back of your neck.
Someone – or something – was watching you.
With a hand on the pommel of your gun – loaded with silver bullets – you turned slowly.
Your mouth dropped in awe.
You hadn’t even noticed the dark stranger beside the young couple.
But you noticed him now.
Naturally, you had heard stories of Alucard over the years. He was one of Lenny’s personal favourites and even the ever-stoic Renard seemed to hold him in high regard.
Adrian Fahrenheit Tepes.
A hero of humanity.
The legendary patron and personal friend of the Belmont family.
God, you were staring at him, you knew, but what could you do? He was so… beautiful.
Well, at least you weren’t the only one making a fool of yourself.
The breath-taking dhampir was staring back at you just the same.
His mouth parted slightly…
… and then he said your name.