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Blood Is Chapter 2-3
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Do I really have to mention that I don't own Castlevania? If I did, we would have gotten to see Julius curbstomp Dracula, the storyline would have been neatened up a bit, and Dracula and Alucard would have just HUGGED already after the reveal in Lords of Shadow 2.
Summary: Lords of Shadow Continuity: AU to Mirror of Fate and Lords of Shadow 2: Trevor wasn't the only one that had the truth of his parentage kept from him by the Brotherhood.
3.
Gabriel smiled at Trevor as the child chattered away to him while they shared breakfast in the nursery.
"An angel, Trevor?" he asked. "You saw an angel last night?"
Trevor nodded rapidly. "Angel, Papa!"
Gabriel smiled faintly as he reached out to comb the boy's hair out of his face. This was so much nicer than dealing with his uncle's hatred at the table in the Great Hall; he would have to try this more often.
"Where did you see the angel?"
Trevor babbled something that couldn't be understood, and Gabriel just nodded and smiled. He reached out with a napkin and wiped a smudge from the boy's cheek, which made Trevor giggle. The child turned back to his breakfast then, and Gabriel felt the smile fade from his face.
This precious, perfect little person, this child, his child, his son...
"Why did they keep you from me?" he asked quietly, addressing no one in particular. "What were they planning?" Trevor looked up at him for a second and grinned. "I won't let them get their hands on you again."
"Papa," Trevor giggled.
Gabriel smiled again, even as his thoughts whirled around in worry. Somehow he had to protect himself and his precious child from the machinations of a crafty old man that held his plans close to his chest, deal with whatever scheme his uncle was cooking up, and somehow, if at all possible, track down and deal with Zobek.
He didn't even know where to start.
Think Gabriel, he told himself as he rested his elbows on the table and held his head in his hands, what can you do to arm yourself against those that seek to harm you and your family?
Well, he supposed he could start by finding out if there was any way to cure his current condition. Being a vampire was a risk to him and the entire family; there had to be a way to rid himself of it, even if it did give him a great deal of power at his disposal.
Power that he didn't have the slightest idea on how to use, he admitted to himself. In the months since his turning, he had not once attempted to really see what he was capable of. He'd been too busy grieving and trying – and ultimately failing – to not lose his mind. It would just be easier and safer if he somehow became human again. He would have to speak to Father Caleb about it as soon as possible.
******
Nothing.
Liam stood up and raked his hair back from his face.
He had been tearing apart Williams's quarters for four straight days, and he had found nothing. Not a note, not a letter, not a single thing that might possibly tell him what his old friend was planning and why or where he had gone. Cecil's quarters had revealed a similar lack of useful information. There had to be something! He couldn't just tell Wolfram Cronqvist that there was nothing to be found. And Gabriel... poor Gabriel, he deserved his answers, and Liam would be damned before he allowed Gabriel to go on without them.
He sighed as he began searching through William's personal library for the third time, and as he worked he thought about the last few days.
The announcement about Cecil and William's wanted status had gone about as well as he had thought it would. Some had been thoughtful at the news, others had been confused, and some had been furious. There had been cries of outrage over the accusations, and Liam's own firm belief in them had not settled things down in the slightest. There had been accusations that the Cronqvists had somehow taken advantage of Gabriel's "obviously fragile" state and confused him somehow, but Liam had come down on those hard. He couldn't allow such talk to reach Wolfram Cronqvist's ears. The consequences would have been disastrous.
"Gabriel is the son of Wolfram and Edeline Cronqvist." he said over the angry mutterings. "I have seen the obvious resemblance with my own eyes, and lest you forget: Cardinal Volpe and Master Cecil admitted to me that he was their son and that they had taken him from their home."
"The Cardinal would never do such a thing!"
"Yes, he would, and yes he did, and unless we want Lord Cronqvist to come down on us like the wrath of God Himself, we'd best find out the Cardinal's reasons as soon as possible."
Thankfully, things around the compound had continued on normally since then, with only grumbles here and there when no one thought him listening. People carried on with their chores and tasks, but Liam had been pleased to hear pockets of discussion about what he had told them, with many seeming to believe him. Hopefully the ones that didn't would come to their senses in time.
He idly flipped through a stack of dusty papers that had been sitting on a high shelf in the library. Nothing, just like the last two times he had looked. Really though, what had he been expecting to find? William had always been the canny and cunning type; he never would have left such evidence lying around where it could have been found by others. Either he had kept everything in his head, or he had taken it with him when he had left.
He sighed; they weren't getting anywhere with this. He dropped the papers down onto a nearby table as his stomach growled, and he sighed again as sleep tugged at his eyelids. He blinked and looked around the large room, dimly lit only by a few dying candles. The lamps hanging from the ceiling had run out of oil hours ago, and he hadn't bothered to refill them, too busy trying to find something, anything, to answer Gabriel's questions. How long had he been at this today? How much longer would he force himself to keep looking before he gave up?
He rubbed at his eyes as his vision blurred and turned towards the door. He needed to sleep before he could do anything else. He could figure out what the do next in the morning.
******
From the small window in the attic room he was sleeping in, William Volpe watched the sun dip below the horizon as the stars appeared overhead. Another day gone. Another day closer to Gabriel's meeting with destiny.
He turned away from the window and took the few short steps to his narrow bed. He could hear Cecil puttering around downstairs, getting into who knew what, but he knew that his old friend would be up soon enough. The tiny house they were staying in for a few days before they moved onto their safe house in the mountains consisted only of a single room downstairs and a little cubbyhole of an attic that was just big enough for two beds. It wasn't comfortable by any stretch of the imagination, but it would do until they could move things along.
Years ago, he'd dreamt of the Brotherhood's founders, and they had told him to journey to Bernhard Castle and look into the mirror that he would find there, that it would tell him things crucial to the fate of all of humanity. He'd wakened from the dream and set out immediately, and several days later, his dream had become real when he had looked upon the mirror in Bernhard Castle and saw the plan that Fate had laid out for him. The mirror had shown him the dark times ahead and what would happen if they weren't brought to a halt. It had then shown him the man that would save them all, and he had easily spotted the eerie resemblance to Wolfram Cronqvist then. If it hadn't been for the image's startling green eyes, one could have been excused for thinking that it had been Lord Cronqvist himself that he had seen in the mirror that day. Obviously then, it was his son meant to save them all, but there was one difficulty.
Wolfram Cronqvist and his wife had no children. William, like everyone else, had heard the whispers and rumors that Lady Cronqvist was unable to carry a pregnancy to term, and that made him worry. Was the mirror incorrect? Had it been another member of the family that he had seen? Did he even have the right family to begin with? True, the man in the image could have nearly passed for Lord Cronqvist's twin, and he had heard since he was a boy that everyone had their twin somewhere, so he supposed that there was a remote possibility that that could be the case with the one he saw in the mirror. He'd managed to break off a small piece of the larger mirror to take home with him for future reference, and then he'd left that cursed castle far behind.
He'd been at a loss to find the one the mirror had shown him, and his thoughts had chased themselves in circles for the next several months as he tried to learn the identity of the one he had seen. He had been a member of the Brotherhood obviously, as his red leather armor with its skull on the front gave that away easily, but there was currently no one in the ranks that looked like that, and none of the children had green eyes.
The man was a Cronqvist; his mind kept circling back to that, he simply had to be. He'd done some discreet investigating and had learned that the Lady Cronqvist was green eyed, and then he had been able to catch a glimpse of her himself and saw that she had the same eyes as the one in the mirror. Certain that he had the right family, he had posted a few trusted men to watch them, and he had felt a thrill of excitement when one of them reported a rumor that Lady Cronqvist was expecting.
Of course, that left him with another dilemma. How was he going to get his hands on the Chosen One? Being raised a pampered heir of a noble family just wouldn't do after all. The boy would have to be groomed to sacrifice everything he had to save the rest of the world, and if the rumors about Edeline Cronqvist's inability to carry a child to term were true, then it was likely that neither she nor her husband would be too keen on letting their son do what needed to be done.
That left one other option, and though he didn't like it, it had to be done. Sacrifices would have to be made for the good of all. The decision was made all the easier by the simple knowledge that he wouldn't be one of the ones doing the sacrificing.
With a plan of action made, he then needed to know the ideal time to set things in motion, and help in that area came from a most unexpected corner. On a return trip to the compound after meeting with his spies that were watching the Cronqvists, he had stopped at a tavern for a meal and had been forced to share a table with a angry drunk that turned out to be Wolfram Cronqvist's younger brother. With his tongue already loosened by the large amount of alcohol he had consumed, it had been easy to get the man talking, and talk he had. Cordrin Cronqvist has ranted and raved about all the injustices heaped upon him during his life; everything from being born the second son, to being less favored by his parents, the recent birth of his own son, and that son loosing his place as heir presumptive due to his sister-in-law's pregnancy were all moaned about as if they were the end of the world.
"It's not fair, you see." Cordrin had slurred. "It should have been me, but Wolfram was always our father's favorite, and then he snubs me by choosing Adelar over me. And now his bitch of a wife is pregnant, and now nothing will ever go in my favor again."
William had tapped his fingers on the rough wood of the tabletop for a second, thinking, and then he had smiled and leaned forward. The other's sour breath had given him pause, but he had forced himself to speak his idea. If it failed, he could always claim it was a drunken hallucination of Cordrin's part. If it succeeded... he would have his Chosen One to mold as he saw fit, with no interference from Lord Cronqvist.
"What would you be willing to do," he had asked in a low tone, "to get your son's place as heir back?"
Cordrin had looked at him through reddened eyes, but underneath the alcoholic haze, there was sharp awareness, and he had leaned across the table with a fierce expression. "Tell me more."
The two of them had planned well into the night, and William had left for home, confident that he would soon have the child that would grow up to the be the man he had seen in the mirror within his grasp. Of course, he kept his spies watching the Cronqvists, for the off chance that Cordrin would suddenly grow a conscience and decided to not go through with it, but he seriously doubted that would happen.
And he was proven right when, three months later, he received a letter from him, stating that his sister-in-law had safely delivered a son.
William had already been ready to go when the letter arrived. He had let Cecil in on them plan weeks before, and his old friend had agreed that drastic times called for drastic measures, and the two of them had gathered a group of their most loyal men, men that would not question any order given to them. Most were from other compounds, but as William was the eldest member of the Brotherhood, it was easy to borrow them for a time. He had told them what they were going to do and why, and though some of the men had been uneasy, they had all agreed to the plan: go in quickly while Lord and Lady Cronqvist were away, remove Mathias Cronqvist, get out as quickly as possible, and vanish as though they had never been there. The men were also under orders to not harm anyone unless they had no other choice. Stealing the family's heir would be more than enough to enrage Wolfram Cronqvist, killing others would only make him worse, and they did not need such a powerful nobleman after them. There was the small possibility that they would be recognized, but William and Cecil considered it a remote one and an acceptable risk. Though the Brotherhood had been around for a few hundred years already, it operated mostly in the shadows and behind the scenes, so only those that lived close to them really knew of their existence. Lord Rosier, on whose land they had their main compound, barely knew about them then.
Taking Gabriel from the house had been more difficult than expected – the Cronqvists had trained their knights well – and there were more deaths than he had wanted, (Including the spies that he had planted, but it had been too dangerous to leave them in place.) but they had made it out with the child. William had ordered the men to swiftly return to their homes and never speak of what had happened, and then he and Cecil had raced home themselves, accompanied only by the nursery assistant, who had been brought along to care for the infant during the journey. Once they were home, they had left Gabriel and the nursemaid in an empty cottage in the woods an hour or so away from the compound, and then had staged his abandonment the next day, fooling everyone and ensuring that he wouldn't be associated with the Cronqvists' missing son.
Liam, honest, open, trusting Liam, had been the one to "find" Gabriel, and it was he that had unknowingly renamed the boy. Not long after, the rumors about Gabriel's origins had started, and though they had made him a little nervous at how close they were, William had neither encouraged or discouraged them. As long as they weren't taken seriously, then no harm could come of them. He had intended to track down the one who had started them, but no one had known where they had come from. Everyone had all heard it from a friend, who had heard it from a friend, who had heard it from a friend, and so on.
With the Chosen One secured, things had neatly fallen into place, and it had been easy to use the mirror to convince Marie Belmont to give Trevor up to their custody and never tell Gabriel about him. It wouldn't do for Gabriel to try and retrieve his son, and they needed Trevor to destroy his father once Gabriel's tasks were complete. If Trevor survived his mission, then they would have to arrange a suicide mission for him, as he had the men that had helped him steal Gabriel from his cradle all those years ago. The nursemaid had fallen victim to an unfortunate "accident" just before Gabriel was left on the doorstep, but William doubted such measures would be needed again. He had seen the mirror, and he knew what Gabriel would become after several years of being alone in Bernhard Castle. An angry, insane, vengeful vampire would be the perfect weapon to point in Satan's direction. All those that he would certainly kill along the way would just be more sacrifices made for the good of the world.
So he had been completely caught off guard by the introduction of the Cronqvists. He still didn't know what possessed him to personally approach Wolfram Cronqvist and ask for permission to build a compound on the man's land, but he was now certain that it was that that set the man on the trail of what had happened to his son all those years ago. Something had just told him to ask during church services in the chapel one morning, and he had done so without questioning. Now things had spiraled out of their intended paths: a calm, sane Gabriel was with his parents, Trevor was in the custody of his father, he and Cecil had become wanted men, and Liam was now in charge the Brotherhood.
He was suddenly glad that he had not sent out his response to the letter that Cordrin Cronqvist had sent him nearly three weeks ago. With everything going on, it was too much of a risk to communicate with him, as Cordin could bring everything down on their heads with one wrong word. (Or too much alcohol in his system.) No, he would have to destroy the letter and hope that the man was capable of keeping his lips sealed without doing anything rash.
As a matter of fact, he thought as he heard Cecil coming up the stairs, he might as well do that now, while he was thinking about it. He didn't want to risk the letter getting left behind or falling out of his satchel while they traveled and being found.
"I have to do something," he said as Cecil appeared at the top of the stairs. "Don't wait up for me; I shan't be long." He walked down the stairs to the small room that was a combination of the living room and kitchen. It was cramped, but it would do until they had reached their safe house in the mountains. His satchel was sitting on the floor by the dying embers in the fireplace, and he quickly opened it up and rifled through it for the letter, so he could quickly burn it before going to bed. He pulled out a few changes of clothing and frowned as he tossed them aside, followed by his grooming kit. Where was the letter? He knew that he had packed it. He picked the satchel up and dumped it out of the floor and dug through the small pile that resulted. It wasn't there. Where was it! Had it fallen out during the rushed journey here? Where. Was. It!
******
"Master Liam,"
Liam grumbled something as the voice touched his ears, chasing away the deep, restful sleep he had been having.
"Master Liam!"
He blinked his eyes open to find himself in his own bedroom, and it seemed as though he had just fallen asleep as he sat up and rubbed his eyes, as he tried to shake the feeling of his head being stuffed with wool.
"What is it?" he asked as he looked towards the doorway, where a teenaged boy was standing, one of their stable hands, he assumed, if the straw clinging to his clothing was any indication.
The boy's blue eyes were looking at him with a serious expression as he handed over a scroll, sealed with wax and tied with ribbon. "I found this in the stable, where the cardinal kept his horse. I thought it might be important."
Liam felt his tiredness vanish as he reached out to take the scroll. "Thank you, child. You'll have to forgive an old man, but I seem unable to remember you name at the moment."
The boy smiled at him. "Anzhel, my name is Anzhel."
Liam managed to return the smile, and then he broke the seal on the scroll, untied the ribbon, and unrolled it to read it. He scanned it briefly, immediately recognizing William's handwriting, and he felt his heart accelerate. This, this is what they had been looking for.
"Ready my horse," he said without looking up from the letter, "and ask the boys for volunteers for an escort. I have to go to the Cronqvists with this as soon as possible." He finally looked up then, and realized that it was still dark outside. "As soon as dawn arrives, we will leave."
Anzhel nodded in understanding, and Liam smiled at him again. "Thank you, child, this is just what I needed to find."
Anzhel walked out, and Liam rerolled and retied the scroll, and secreted it under his pillow for the moment. He needed to get this to Gabriel and his father as soon as he could.
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Aw, no worries! Life likes to get in the way sometimes, right? Anyway, glad you loved the chapter. :) Right now, I'm combing through the entire fic looking for typos, continuity errors, and fixing some things (Easier to do it now than later, when the fic is longer.) and THEN I'll be able to write the next chapter.
*rocks on*
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