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Yvette, the Vampire Slayer - Arc 1

Summary:

A series rewrite which merges the world of Castlevania and the World of BtVS.

Let's be honest, a family of demon hunters would be the perfect place to hide a Slayer.

Notes:

Disclaimer: If you recognise it from somewhere else, it isn't mine.

 

 

There are a considerable number of OCs in this story but, for the most part, they hang around in the background.

It also includes a personal headcanon of mine.

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Chapter 1: The new Slayer

Chapter Text

Wallachia, 1103
‘Belmont, eh?’ Law threw his head back and drained the tankard. ‘Sounds French. What are they doing in Wallachia?’

‘Maybe they moved here for some reason.’ Eliza was in the process of filing her nails. ‘But that’s the girl’s name: Yvette Belmont.’

‘Well, that is definitely French.’ Law looked over at her. ‘Funny how the Powers see it fit to tell you this but the Council are still looking.’

‘Well, I’m a Slayer myself,’ Eliza said. ‘The whole purpose of the Watchers is to train the Slayer. Must be something about this new one that renders them redundant.’

‘So, it’s talking time?’ Law asked.

***

One week later, Eliza rode up to the homestead of the Belmont family.

A family of demon hunters...She mused. They had only been around about twenty years or so, and yet they had every supernatural thing around here quaking in fear and on their best behaviour. It was no wonder that the Watchers were seen as redundant in the circumstances. All the Powers required from Eliza was to approach the Belmonts and explain what the Slayer was to them.

Shit, am I really the only Slayer that lived past the seven-year mark?

A footman came to the door as Eliza approached.

‘Are you lost, ma’am?’ he asked.

‘No,’ Eliza said. ‘I’ve come to see Sir Leon Belmont. I have the answers he’s seeking.’

The footman looked startled. His assistant, a small boy, spoke up. ‘You better send word to him, sir. You know he’ll have you if you send her away without telling him and he finds out.’

Eliza was amused to see, rather than striking the boy as most superiors might do, he bit his lip and told her to wait. Eliza dismounted and did as told. As she waited, she stretched her senses out. There were quite a few magical wards around the place, all of them directed at protecting the building from supernatural attack.

So the Belmonts would be sufficiently familiar with magic.

Eliza looked over as a man who looked like a butler walked out and nodded to her. The boy waiting with her took her horse and she walked up to him. He immediately turned and led her into the manorhouse. As he took her upstairs, he asked the question that was inevitably going to come.

‘What is your name?’

‘Elizaveta Aurealis.’

The butler nodded and led her into the room. ‘Elizaveta Aurealis, Sir Belmont.’ She was let in and showed to a seat.

The room she’d been brought into was a small parlour. The man who sat opposite her had the air of an aristocrat, and of a warrior. He looked just like the knight he once was. He had longish blond hair and sharp blue eyes. Behind him, a girl of about sixteen years with the same blue eyes and blonde hair stood. She had her hands folded in front of her, but the tension in her was visible.

‘Lady Aurealis,’ Sir Belmont said. ‘You’ve come here with the claims that you can explain what’s happening to my daughter.’ He nodded his head towards the girl at his side.

‘I can,’ Eliza said. ‘I can because the same thing happened to me when I was her age.’

Leon Belmont’s eyes twitched. ‘And that was?’

‘Consistent dreams of demon hunting, despite the fact that you’ve probably never done it in your life. In every dream, you’re someone different: a princess, a peasant girl, an ancient Greek slave, a Chinawoman in the Tang Dynasty, a Roman-era Welsh Celt still holding out against the invaders. You see it all from their perspectives.’

Leon looked up at his daughter. She slowly nodded. He then looked back at Eliza.

‘You’re suddenly faster, stronger, and sharper to your surroundings than you ever were before.’ She nodded towards Leon. ‘Sometimes, you might even know about the presence of a demon or vampire before it can be heard.’

Again, her father looked up at her.

She looked alarmed. ‘I...I get a tingling sensation at the base of my neck when there’s something around.’

Eliza nodded. ‘That’s the Slayer’s sixth sense. Tells us when there’s a demon or vampire around. Also, it serves to direct your response when you’re attacked.’

‘Slayer?’ Leon asked.

‘Yes,’ Eliza said. ‘Into every generation of every family one daughter is born with the potential to become a mystically enhanced warrior called the Slayer. Very few of these Potential Slayers are actually activated – or called, if you happen to be a self-important Watcher who refuses to recognise the fact that he’s using underdeveloped girls as human shields.’

Eliza wasn’t surprised to see both of them freeze.

Leon reached back and patted his daughter’s hand. ‘Sit, Yvette,’ he told her.

The Belmont butler instantly brought her a chair and she sank down into it.

Leon leaned forward and clasped his hands, looking Eliza right in the eye. ‘Would you please elaborate on that?’

‘Certainly.’ Eliza hadn’t liked the Watchers when she’d been mortal, and the years had not endeared them to her. She had no qualms about throwing them to the wolves. ‘In the beginning of human civilisation – sometime after the Garden of Eden but before Babylon – demons freely roamed the earth. They hunted humans like humans now hunt elk, and humans showed just as much response. That was until a small group of village elders known as the Shadow Men decided to do something.’ Eliza frowned. The next part had taken her quite a while to find out, but it hadn’t been surprising to her.
‘They took one of the girls from the tribe – probably against her will and without telling her what they were doing. Seeing as she was the template for the rest of us, I’d say she was about five and ten years.’

Leon glanced over at his daughter.

Eliza went on. ‘They chained her to the floor of a cave. Now, I know not where they got the Shadow Demon, or by what means they trapped it, but they enacted a ritual which forcibly fused it to her soul.’

Eliza then sat back and waited for the reaction.

Yvette’s face paled. She leapt to her feet and bolted out of the room. Leon didn’t look away from Eliza, a dark shadow having crossed his face, and told his butler in French to ensure Yvette did nothing impetuous in her state. The butler bowed his head and left. The demon hunter and the Slayer regarded each other for a moment.

‘How is the power passed?’ he asked.

‘Usually by the death of the previous Slayer.’

A tick took up residence in Leon’s jaw. ‘Usually?’

‘Slayers have the tendency to die quickly,’ Eliza said. ‘The average Slayer lives only one year into her activation. If a Slayer makes it to the seven-year mark she becomes immortal, and this causes the Slayer Spirit to move on, taking a copy of her memories to the next Slayer. This is what happened to me.’

‘I suppose that explains how you’re still here, but I will require proof.’

‘I will provide it.’

Leon nodded. ‘And how did you know to come here? How did you know Yvette had been activated as the new Slayer?’

‘When the Powers want to tell a Slayer something, they put the message into their dreams. Over time, the Slayer learns to interpret these dreams – if she sits down and actually pays attention to them. Most of them just rely on their Watchers to tell them what the dreams mean.’

Leon raised an eyebrow.

Eliza immediately winced. ‘I’m sorry. The Watchers are the descendents of the Shadow Men. Their purpose, stated by them, is to watch the Slayer and keep a record of her battles. While I do not deny that they make a record of the Slayer’s battles, they often do so from the comfort of home, whilst sending the girl out into the night. There are very few Watchers I have ever set eyes on who genuinely care about their charge; who think of her as a person in her own right rather than a tool to be used until it expires.’

‘If they created the Slayer in this way, it hardly surprises me. And these “powers”?’

Eliza paused and considered how to explain it. A paraphrasing of Whistler’s initial explanation to her seemed best. ‘Think of a ladder consisting of sentient beings. On the bottom rung you have your humans, on the top is God and Satan. The Powers That Be fall somewhere in the middle. They’re the ones that interact the most with the mortal world.’

‘Do they choose the Slayer?’ Leon asked.

‘In this case, I think so, yes.’

Leon inclined his head. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Usually, it’s a random selection, but this just screams of an intentional selection.’ Eliza frowned. ‘Yvette was born into this family, who has the entire supernatural population of Wallachia behaving themselves. I’d feel reasonably safe betting you’ve been drumming demonology into her head since she was a small child. And you’ve certainly got the tools of the trade.’ She nodded to the weapons on him. ‘My reckoning is that the Powers wanted an active Slayer that doesn’t need as much training, and certainly doesn’t need the Watcher’s Council.’

Leon sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. ‘I anticipated training my son to be a demon hunter, but I never dreamed I’d have to do the same for my daughter.’

Eliza just nodded. ‘And the fact is that this could happen again, if your family line continues this way. If Yvette works out well as a Slayer, and another situation arises in which they need one that is pre-broken-in and unaffiliated with the Watcher’s Council, the Powers could send the Slayer Spirit to a Belmont girl again.’

‘And it’s important this girl is unaffiliated with these Watchers?’ Leon asked.

‘It is,’ Eliza said. ‘The Watcher’s Council goes around looking for Potential Slayers so that they can start training them early in case they do become the Slayer. They then remove them from their families – I have seen kidnapping happen here – and isolate them entirely so that all they have to rely on is the Watchers, hence the average lifespan of a year.’

‘Why was Yvette never singled out?’

‘Did you have any other daughters besides her?’ Eliza asked. ‘Even if they died in infancy or childhood?’

‘Yes, I did.’

‘That would be why. Potential Slayers do die in childhood just as every other little girl might. The Watcher’s Council only have a rudimentary understanding of what makes a Potential Slayer and tend to look for higher physical ability before they use a spell that either confirms or debunks the idea that a particular girl might be a Potential. Aside from the fact that you’re demon hunters and they don’t want other demon hunting bodies to become aware of them, for obvious reasons, they have no means of knowing if being more physically able than usual is a direct result of being raised in a family of demon hunters.’

Leon nodded. ‘So as long as we have more than one girl and train them all for the eventuality of being the Slayer, our girls are safe from them?’

‘Reasonably.’