Chapter 2
504words
A few of her devotees still chattered excitedly about what silk dresses she might be wearing, but most of us returned to moldy potato soup and endless chores.
I scrubbed dishes in the back kitchen.
Greasy, frigid water rose over my knuckles, numbing my fingers to the bone.
"If Sister Anna were here, she'd send us candies," a little girl murmured, crouching by the stove and staring out the window. "She said she'd become a princess."
"She did go to the castle." I attacked a stubborn stain with steel wool. "But princesses don't typically live in the cellar."
"You're just jealous!" The girl stuck out her tongue. "Sister Anna said you're destined to wash dishes forever—not even worthy of holding her shoes."
I paused, gazing at the darkening sky outside.
Jealous?
Perhaps.
Not everyone gets to live in a four-hundred-year-old castle.
With its Gothic spires, corridors lined with masterpieces, and sunless basement filled with exquisite dining tables—complete with blood drainage channels.
The bread crust Anna threw at me still sits on my bedside table, now fuzzy with blue-green mold.
She'd sneered: "This is all you deserve, sister."
What she didn't know: once she walked through those castle doors, she wouldn't even get moldy bread.
To ensure blood purity and flavor, the servants would feed her special liquid nutrients—a solution laced with anticoagulants and hematopoietic stimulants.
After drinking it, victims stay feverishly excited and rosy-cheeked—right until their last drop of blood is drained.
"I hope her blood vessels are sturdy." I stacked the clean plates with a sharp clink.
In the dead of night, ghastly moonlight spilled through the windows.
Dodging the patrolling nuns, I slipped into the kitchen and pushed open a hidden door behind the wine cellar.
Behind the rotting wood wasn't a storage closet but a dry armory reeking of gun oil.
Silver-plated short swords hung on the walls alongside repeating hand crossbows and well-oiled double-barrel shotguns.
A one-eyed old man sat at the table, polishing a gun barrel with deerskin.
He was the orphanage gatekeeper, my grandfather, and this region's legendary retired night watchman.
"Did the bloodsucker take the bait?" Grandfather didn't look up, his lone eye gleaming coldly in the lamplight.
"She did." I took down a modified Colt revolver, expertly flipping open the cylinder to check the mercury-filled bullets. "The bait was quite cooperative. Eager, even."
"That's a pureblood." Grandfather's hands stilled. "Bathory bloodline. That girl won't last three months."
"Three months is plenty."
I snapped the cylinder shut with a satisfying click and aimed at the anatomical diagram on the wall—a vampire's physiological structure, heart position marked with a bold red circle.
Grandfather studied me, his lone eye glinting with rare amusement. "You're more ruthless than your dead father. Good. That's how a Van Helsing should be."
I said nothing, simply loading bullets into the magazine.
Cruel? No. I just understand this world's rules better than Anna: be the hunter or be the hunted.
