Michael Belmont and the Heir of Van Helsing (The Adventures of Michael Belmont) (45 page)

Liam reached out and caught him by the arm.
 
“I’m serious.
 
Just stand still and listen.”

For a moment he couldn’t hear anything, but suddenly there it was.
 
He nodded.

“It’s harpsichord music.” Liam said.

Michael nodded in agreement.

The music was growing steadily louder.
 
Michael’s eyes grew wide as he noticed that the place was beginning to light up all around them.
 
Like the music, it started off subtly, barely noticeable.
 
The sound and the glow intensified together, speeding up at a disorienting rate until the entire ballroom erupted into festivity.
 
Ghostly torches and hundreds of candles lit up the room with an ethereal green light.
 

Michael could now hear other stringed instruments accompanying the harpsichord.
 
Men and women in elegant renaissance clothing danced across the floor to the music, their translucent forms gliding like sheets in the wind.
 
The white, glittering form of a woman came spinning toward Michael and stopped to bow just a few feet away.
 
She had a pointed nose and her hair was in a bun behind her head.
 
She looked stunning, and Michael could smell her flowery perfume as she reached out to take his hand.
 
Instinctively, he lifted it to hers just as the form of a tall gentleman in military garb passed through him from behind to meet her.
 
It felt like being immersed in freezing water.

Michael shivered, and stumbled away from another couple that came twirling toward him.
 
He had no desire for any more of these entities to pass through him.
 
He bumped into Liam and turned to see a look of fascination and fright on his face.

“IT’S AMAZING,” Michael shouted over the music, which seemed unusually loud for a harpsichord.
 
He felt like he’d been thrust into a rock concert.
 
Many of the people were talking and laughing with one another, which only added to the noise, but Michael couldn’t understand anything they were saying.

After a few minutes of observing the ethereal dancers, the boys began to move once again toward the back of the room, jumping this way and that to avoid another collision.
 
They succeeded most of the time, but it was still a shock whenever Michael felt one of the spirits go through him, like having ice water pass through his body.

As they approached the back of the room, an orange glow could be seen emanating from the hearth of a large fireplace.
 
Michael could hear the crackle of the wood and feel the warmth radiating toward him.
 
He was cold, and imagined how comforting it would be to get closer to the flames.
 
He moved as quickly as he could toward the fire, glancing nervously behind him to make sure Liam was keeping up.
 
He turned just in time to see a shocked look on his face as a short pudgy woman spun through the left side of his body.

A few dozen feet away from the fire the harpsichord player sat gleefully pounding at the keys.
 
Two other minstrels stood behind him, one with a tall harp and the other with a lute.
 
All three of them smiled and swayed as they played their incorporeal instruments.

The lute player took a step aside as the large kitchen door opened up behind him.
 
Ghostly servants with heaping platters of food filed out of the doorway and placed them down on banquet tables on the far side of the fireplace.
 
With them came the faint smell of roasted meat and other enticing scents.
 
Michael’s mouth began to water, but as they approached the hearth he got a better look at the food, and was disappointed to see a feast composed of nothing more than dim green light.

You wouldn’t have been stupid enough to eat it even if it had been real food
, he thought to himself.

Liam stood beside him looking disappointed as well.
 
Even through all the noise Michael thought he heard his friend’s stomach growl.

The minstrels finished their song, and began to play a less jovial tune while a horde of guests approached the tables.
 
Before long, turkey legs and goblets of wine were being waved through the air amidst the now louder clamor of conversation.

“So where do we go now?” Liam asked in a raised voice.
 
“The only way out of here that I can see is through those kitchen doors.”

Michael pointed off into the corner behind the banquet tables.
 
“That stairway looks like it goes up into the balcony, but I think you’re right about going through the kitchen, we should see where that leads first.”

They reluctantly moved away from the warmth of the spectral fire, maneuvering around a gentleman with a long braided beard who was leaning against the wall, casually raising his drink to a woman who looked much more enthused than he did.

Liam took the handle of the kitchen door, and began to pull it open when something took hold from the other side.
 
It yanked the door shut and they heard a commotion from within.
 
The two boys looked at each other with worried faces.
 
Together they began to yank on the door as hard as they could, but it wouldn’t budge.
 
Once again, they were trapped.

Suddenly, a loud male voice boomed out from the front of the room.
 
Michael couldn’t understand what the man was saying, although there was one word he thought he recognized-
Vlad
.

The people in the ballroom parted and began cheering and raising their glasses to whomever it was the man had just announced, and then they became silent.
 
They were obviously listening to someone speak, but Michael couldn’t hear anything.
 
He looked at Liam, who shook his head and shrugged back at him.

They moved through the crowd once again to try and get a better look.
 
It proved impossible to do so without passing through some of the ghostly figures, but this didn’t stop them.
 
They were determined to get a look at who was speaking.
 
Occasionally, the crowd would laugh or cheer at something they’d heard, but apart from that they continued to listen intently.

The boys reached the front of the crowd and gazed into the large circle that had been cleared for the speaker.
 
Just as they’d heard no one speaking, they saw no one standing before them.

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” Liam whispered.
 
Michael nodded gloomily.

After a few moments, the specters all laughed uproariously, and the crowd near the front door parted once again.
 
The doors swung open and people quickly resumed their conversations, raising their goblets and chattering excitedly, smiling and looking up toward the front of the room.

Michael, who had found the face of the beautiful woman he’d encountered when it all began, watched as her gleeful smile abruptly changed to a look of fear.
 
There were grumblings, a woman screamed, and the front door of the ballroom slammed shut with a resounding boom that made Michael jump.

“Let’s go,” he told Liam, and began to run toward the back.

“Go where?”

“Up the stairs I guess.
 
Maybe there’s a way out from the balcony.”

They sprinted toward the circular staircase, but when they were nearly there, Michael felt Liam’s hand grab ahold of his shoulder and pull him back.

“Wait,” he said frantically, “look up there!”

From the balcony along the back wall, large cauldrons of misty liquid began to be poured down upon the crowd below.

“LOOK, it’s coming from the sides as well,” Liam yelled.

Michael watched as the last few bits of liquid and the cauldrons that held it were dropped from above.
 
They heard crunching and gong-like sounds all around them, and watched as the terrified specter of the harpsichord player dodge out of he way as his instrument was reduced to glittering splinters beneath the cauldron.

Fire had begun to spread through the room even before the torches were dropped from the balcony.
 
Michael and Liam soon found themselves surrounded by waist-high ethereal flames.
 
The ghostly figures, which had only minutes ago been so festive and carefree, were now running chaotically in all directions, unable to escape the horror of being roasted alive.
 
Michael stumbled backward onto the floor as the figures passed through him.
 
Instead of the freezing sensation he had gotten before, he now felt burning each time one ran through him.
 
It was unbearable, and as the misty green images swirled around, his head began to pound from the horrible screams of the poor souls who were dying on every side.

He heard himself call out to Liam as his head thudded down against the floor.
 
He couldn’t take the heat; it was as if his very soul were on fire.
 
His eyes began to close, and the last thing he saw was a large, dark figure drop through the swirling green flames above.
 
He was jerked up, and felt his limp body being dragged through the air as the screaming faded away beneath him.

Michael opened his eyes to the twinkling of lights.
 
Candles, he thought, hundreds of tiny candles.
 
They all blurred into the image of an engulfing fire as he jerked himself awake.
 
What a horrible nightmare.
 
His body began to shake, and he wiped at his eyes trying to get his vision to clear.

No…they were stars.
 
The night sky opened up all around him.
 
He pulled himself to a sitting position and gazed at the yellow crescent moon hanging off in the distance.
 
Liam was lying on the ground beside him, taking in the short breaths of a troubled sleep.
 
Scanning the darkness, he gulped to see a black figure leaning against the parapet castle wall.

“How are you feeling?” the man asked him.

Suddenly, everything came flooding back to him.

“I feel…kind of like someone just tried to cook me.”

The stranger took a few steps toward him.
 
Instinctively, Michael began to push himself away, coming to a stop when his back hit the wall.
 
Detecting his fear, the man stopped and pulled something out of his cloak.

“I think this belongs to you.”

It was Michael’s faery lantern, and its light turned the pale face of the man standing before him blue.

“Alucard,” Michael said excitedly.
 
“You’re the one who pulled us out of that fire?”

“You and your friend barely made it out of that ballroom with your lives.
 
It was a very unlucky place to have wandered into.”

“Luck had nothing to do with it.
 
We spoke with Liam’s mother on a spirit board and she told us it was the way to the throne room.”

“I doubt it was your friend’s mother you spoke to.
 
Hasn’t anyone ever warned you about the evils of divination?”

Michael looked down to the floor.
 
“Liam said those boards were dangerous, we just figured that maybe we could use it for good.
 
We weren’t trying to do anything bad with it.”

“Most people don’t intend any harm when they dabble with such things.
 
But they soon find themselves dealing with forces they have no control over, as you discovered tonight.
 
You would be wise to avoid such evil in the future.”

“I will, I promise. But where’ve you been for the last few days?” Michael asked him.

Alucard sat down in front of him.
 
“I’ve been a prisoner here in the castle.
 
My brother saw to it that I had no means of escape.
 
I’ve not been able to help your friend Elizabeth.
 
I’m sorry I failed you Michael.”

“Well you’re here now.
 
I’m glad you’re all right.
 
But, how
did
you escape anyway?”

“An angel came and ripped the door off my cell,” he said.

“An angel?” Michael asked skeptically.
 
He’d seen many strange beings in this place, but no angels.

Alucard nodded and offered him a bottle of water.
 
“And now we need to finish the work that destiny has set before us.
 
Tell me everything you can.
 
How did you get here, and who came with you?”

Michael recounted everything he could remember, going back to the day Alucard had disappeared.
 
He had many questions, and Michael found himself backtracking to fill in details he’d forgotten.
 
Alucard’s eyes lit up when Michael told him they’d met the Dragon.

“Yeah,” Michael told him.
 
“He’s been a prisoner in this castle all along, and we saved him.
 
He tried his best to get that lance for us, Ascalon he called it, but we lost him as he fought that fish creature Dagon, and we didn’t know how to help him.”

“It’s not your fault, Michael.
 
You did the right thing to protect your sister and the Van Helsing girl.
 
None of you were any match for Dagon.”
 
His eyes wandered off and came to settle on the moon.
 
“If only he’d been able to get that lance….
 
But, perhaps it’s not too late.
 
I’m familiar with those caverns, and I know where Dagon’s lair is.
 
He won’t give me the weapon willingly, though he considers me a prince.”