[Alucard can't tell how many days it has been. (A week. It has been a week.) Everything has blurred together, horrible and exhausting and terrifying. He remembers the last time he felt this way, the overwhelming horror and grief and fury, and it is the worst thing he could think of in this moment. Alucard doesn't dare give voice to what this is close to, and he is certain that Trevor's own feelings are thinking of all the Belmonts now lost due to a horrible fucking bomb. They're without her, and for it everything is going to be tossed to the wind.
His appearance is not required at any function. Alucard pretends office hours are for vampire work, but it is for finding Sypha. For sitting with Trevor and watching him do battle with the myriad of enchantments the necromancer has laid out to cover his trail. He is, after all, good at magic. Good at hiding where he is, misdirecting the two. Even using Sypha's blood (recovered from Alucard's claws, he had sat and tried not to scream as Trevor took cotton and cleaned out whatever he could from underneath all of them. The bigger the sample, the better. Alucard understood the logic but he still hated everything.
Sleeping at the townhouse wasn't an option. Everything they needed was at the castle, but the idea of sleeping in their bed without her was unforgivable. Alucard had found a spare room instead with a passable mattress, and when either one of them was exhausted, they would crash there.
Not that sleep came easy. After two or three hours Alucard would snap awake from a fresh nightmare, thrashing and flying up to one of their tracking devices to pray that there was a new lead. When there was, it would be followed, but only to be misdirected.
In that misdirection, they understood the necromancer better. All of the shadows and misdirection, it was a source of power. So they began to think about the city in a new way, where there was the least amount of sun, where shadows were heaviest, and in so doing, the city provided the right answer. The oldest part, the most heavily built upon, that was the likely spot for the necromancer's place of power.
(They would be going into it, but not blindly. Flares, lamps, anything to force brightness.)
Dracula's own library helped. Counter spells that Trevor could manage and easier ones for Alucard. He was the least skilled of the three with magic, but he could understand what must be done. There was one such spell applied to his sword, something to make it glow. It would, in theory, allow an easier time of beating back the shadows.
Then there had been the quiet discussion of what the priority had to be. Sypha. Not destroying the necromancer, if push came to shove, but Sypha. The man had to die, he had to, and as painful as the idea of putting it off was, the thought of letting her die first was unacceptable.
So it was that after a week of horrible heartsickness, of planning, of terror, of every desperate emotion, that the plan began. The first step was to ensure the real McCoy was out of his lair. It was done. Some business had happened, and that meant that Alucard and Trevor could approach the house he used. Trevor was working remotely, an idea that terrified Alucard but was required. If something happened to the vampire, one of them could still act. Doing otherwise? The city's power structure actually would collapse.
Alucard's approach is hidden. Cloaked not in shadow but in a glaring brightness in the middle of the day.]
no subject
His appearance is not required at any function. Alucard pretends office hours are for vampire work, but it is for finding Sypha. For sitting with Trevor and watching him do battle with the myriad of enchantments the necromancer has laid out to cover his trail. He is, after all, good at magic. Good at hiding where he is, misdirecting the two. Even using Sypha's blood (recovered from Alucard's claws, he had sat and tried not to scream as Trevor took cotton and cleaned out whatever he could from underneath all of them. The bigger the sample, the better. Alucard understood the logic but he still hated everything.
Sleeping at the townhouse wasn't an option. Everything they needed was at the castle, but the idea of sleeping in their bed without her was unforgivable. Alucard had found a spare room instead with a passable mattress, and when either one of them was exhausted, they would crash there.
Not that sleep came easy. After two or three hours Alucard would snap awake from a fresh nightmare, thrashing and flying up to one of their tracking devices to pray that there was a new lead. When there was, it would be followed, but only to be misdirected.
In that misdirection, they understood the necromancer better. All of the shadows and misdirection, it was a source of power. So they began to think about the city in a new way, where there was the least amount of sun, where shadows were heaviest, and in so doing, the city provided the right answer. The oldest part, the most heavily built upon, that was the likely spot for the necromancer's place of power.
(They would be going into it, but not blindly. Flares, lamps, anything to force brightness.)
Dracula's own library helped. Counter spells that Trevor could manage and easier ones for Alucard. He was the least skilled of the three with magic, but he could understand what must be done. There was one such spell applied to his sword, something to make it glow. It would, in theory, allow an easier time of beating back the shadows.
Then there had been the quiet discussion of what the priority had to be. Sypha. Not destroying the necromancer, if push came to shove, but Sypha. The man had to die, he had to, and as painful as the idea of putting it off was, the thought of letting her die first was unacceptable.
So it was that after a week of horrible heartsickness, of planning, of terror, of every desperate emotion, that the plan began. The first step was to ensure the real McCoy was out of his lair. It was done. Some business had happened, and that meant that Alucard and Trevor could approach the house he used. Trevor was working remotely, an idea that terrified Alucard but was required. If something happened to the vampire, one of them could still act. Doing otherwise? The city's power structure actually would collapse.
Alucard's approach is hidden. Cloaked not in shadow but in a glaring brightness in the middle of the day.]