Chapter Text
The waves crash against the hull and he can feel it.
Feel it through his bones and through his teeth, through his marrow and every vein in his body. He hears it too, hears the dull roar of it and the raw power that it carries in every strike. He’ll be alive so many centuries he knows he’ll lose count one day, but he is sure he will never meet anyone or anything stronger than the sea.
The ship lists again and he’s thrown against the far wall of the cell they’ve put him in, his wrists chafing together painfully as his body slams into the bars; somehow they’ve looped silver chains around his hands, and the bars of the cell are plated with the stuff. He wonders how many royal cargoes these pirates have raided, how many royal throats they’ve slit and how much blue blood they’ve spilled, to have this much silver at their disposal.
They’ve filled his blood with it as well, heavy dollops of it pushed into his veins with a syringe. He’s tired and starving, his energy depleting. But these people are fools if they think this can stop him, if they think this is enough to quell him for longer than a day or two. They do not know what he can do, what he has become.
They certainly have taken their due precautions, however—there’s all the silver, for one thing; they’ve been starving him carefully, with thin, meager portions of sustenance provided to him every other day, sometimes not even that; there are crosses burned into the padlock of the cell, burning his skin if he tries to reach for it. They’ve prepared to hold him here, that much is certain.
But breaking free will be child’s play. He merely has to wait for the opportune moment to strike.
Every day at exactly noon a man comes down into the brig, with a glass tube filled with thick liquid silver that he pushes into his veins, dulling his senses and sending him under a temporary haze. He is the only person that he sees, the only real human contact he’s had since they captured him, the only human contact he has as the minutes bleed into hours, which have bled into days, which he knows will bleed into weeks soon.
It has been long enough. They know what he is, but they don’t know what he can do. They intend to sell him, he knows. Sell his teeth, his hair, his skin and his blood. Send them to alchemists, black magicians, men of the church who dabble in satanism and the occult behind the back of their bishops.
And they will dock soon. He can feel the currents shifting, giving way, the waves growing and lessening the way it does when there is land nearby. He knows that he cannot let them reach land.
He hears footsteps descending the steps and goes still, closing his bruised eyes. The smell of silver is heavy in the air, heavy on his skin. It will be even heavier in his blood, but he does not intend to allow it to get there. Not today, and never again. This man will be the first to die.
He hears him reach the cell, crouching next to the bars, hears the thick clink of glass filled with liquid. He makes no move to throw the man off when he takes his arm, jamming the needle forcefully into his already sore and bruised skin, healed over poorly from the many previous jabs with it and the lack of blood to heal. The man moves to press down on the plunger.
He opens his eyes.
The man lets out a strangled cry as he brings his chained hands up, yanking them apart. The chain loosens, and he reaches out faster than the eye can follow, bringing his hands behind the man’s neck through the bars and pulling him forward, the chains digging into his skin.
The man’s head slams into the bars and he loses consciousness before he can make a sound. He withdraws, dislodging the needle with a careless flick of his arm, then pulls the man closer, feeling his teeth aching, his empty veins contracting, howling for blood. Finally, after weeks, he will have his strength back.
His fangs sink into the man’s neck and his eyes snap open, another gurgling shout escaping his lips. It should be clean, should be perfunctory almost, taking his blood. But the hunger is too powerful, the darkness in his chest writhing with pleasure and delight as he swallows mouthful after mouthful of it, none of it seeming like it will be enough.
He sees his vision go crimson, and then he surrenders beneath the vast force of the primal creature he’s become, his teeth sinking in deeper. The man inhales to cry out, but it cuts off into a choked wheeze as he grabs the man’s hair, tilting his head and tearing his throat out with one single jerk of his head.
The man is dead before all the breath can rush out of his lungs, and fresh blood gushes from the ragged, weeping wound in his neck. He bites again and again, feeling the warm red essence of the man’s life dripping down his face, coating his hands, filling his veins and running over the floorboards, dark and viscous.
He feels his strength and power returning with each swallow, his fingers slipping on the man’s blood-slicked skin as he drinks. The silver that weighs his blood down begins to thin and dilute, its effect on him weakening until it is nothing but a faint heaviness in his limbs. He has been starving and weakened for so long now that he doubts this man’s lifeblood will give him everything he once had, but it will have to do for now.
Once there is nothing left to take and the man is but a husk of skin and bone he stands, his eyes opening as he feels the whites of them bleed through, his power thrumming to life beneath his skin. He lifts his hands, gazing calculatingly at the chains that hardly pain him now. He pulls his wrists apart gently and the chain snaps as if it is made of paper, slithering to the floor where they rest with a soft clink.
He walks to the bars, grasping two of them and forcing them apart. He feels the silver coating them sizzle against his palms but it causes the barest of stings on his skin now; he bends the bars and they come apart with a low groan, breaking apart in his grip. He steps out of the cell, gazing back but once to look at it, the rivers of blood running down the floor and the tightly covered porthole, the dead man lying limp at the bars and the glass tube of silver rolling across the floor as the ship sways.
He turns and makes his way out of the brig, ascending the steps and stopping at the very last one, breathing deeply; it has been long, too long, since he has felt the moonlight on his skin, felt the salty sea breeze on his face. It makes everything seem clearer suddenly, makes some deep-rooted instinct that has lived inside him since he was a man rear its head and roar its victory.
The woman standing guard is next. She doesn’t even have time to scream before he tears her neck open with his teeth, spilling her throat onto the decks below their feet. Her eyes roll up into her head as her blood coats his hands, and her limp body falls forward into his arms.
He can hear the rest of the crew, hear their heartbeats and their breath as they stand at the rail for the watch. He can hear the captain in his cabin, hear his even breathing. They are not lucky tonight. But the ones who are asleep will wake up the next day at dawn to a new morning, a different morning. A red morning.
He looks down at the woman’s body in his arms, her blood running steadily over his clothes. It would be a shame to waste it all, he thinks, and something almost like a smile pulls at his lips. His fingers tighten around her, weighted down with blood and life, life that is rapidly fading.
Once her body is little more than a shell he leans down, feeling her blood dripping down his chin, masking the lower half of his face and coating his hands in scarlet gloves till his elbows, black in the moonlight that filters down from the sky above. He bites again, this time gently, something meant to give and not to take. He allows the venom that runs through his teeth to trickle into her veins, filling the empty vessels. She doesn’t wake, but he feels a tremor of something dark and powerful shudder through her.
He lifts his own wrist to his mouth, tearing the skin open with his teeth. Bright, ruby-red blood that shimmers beneath the moonlight as if crusted with gems runs down his forearm, the wound weeping. Already he can feel it healing, his skin knitting itself back together. Before it can fully heal over he presses his wrist to her parted lips, lips from which one last breath is escaping. He traps it, forcing her to swallow, condemning her to a life of undeath and a life that cannot even be called so. A half-life, perhaps. A damned, cursed life. But what consequence does a cursed life have when it is eternal?
Then he lowers her to the ground, straightening. She is entirely limp, and if it isn’t for the venom and blood he knows flows through her veins now, he would have thought she was dead already. But she will wake. And when she does, she will be his to command. The first of his crew.
He looks up, breathing deeply, though he does not need to; it is more of a conscious, familiar gesture now, something that had once calmed him when he had drawn breath. It’s clear, the sky, not a cloud in sight. The moon is but a curved slice of silver, so slender that it looks like a rip in the endless crushed black velvet of the heavens, the curved blade of a knife insinuated between the stars.
The captain’s quarters are dark, the lamps doused and the doors firmly shut. Nobody guards it—the Captain is a haughty man, and he dislikes proximity. He does not entirely trust his crew, he knows. He had seen it the very first night they had bound him and thrown him into the brig; he had refused to let any of them search him, doing it himself instead. His gaze had been shifting, suspicious.
He is not popular with them either, and they have not tried to hide it. Voices filter down sometimes to the cells, and he hears them curse his name and call him a coward, a blackguard, say that he does not honor the code and that he has no fear of the gods and no fear of the sea. Every pirate, no matter how dauntless, should fear the sea.
Perhaps he will be doing the crew a favor then, by killing him.
He wills his nails to grow, sharpening into deadly points. He slides his fingers between the doors, finding the latch. It pops open and he slips into the cabin silently, letting the door swing open behind him. He hears the Captain’s breaths, even and shallow in sleep. He does not even sleep with a knife or a weapon, blissfully ignorant of his crew’s mutinous countenance, and clearly arrogant.
His death will not be swift; he wants to savor this. This man had been the one to slaughter his crew, take his ship, took the stone—the source of his power—and threaten to bring him back to the one place he had sworn never to return to. He has filled his veins with silver and has starved him for days on end, has tortured him and threatened to sell him in the markets of his own home.
He should have known that his power would have attracted pirates, that word of his newfound darkness would have spread across the seas. But he had not been expecting an attack so soon, mere weeks after he had been born again. He supposes this is his lesson, one he has to learn from. This will be the last surprise, and this man will be the last greedy slaver.
He is standing above the Captain’s cot, gazing down into his face. Slowly, so as not to miss a single moment of it, he drags a claw down his throat, down his chest and just below his navel. His eyes shoot open as his skin parts, sliced cleanly down the middle, blood spurting. He draws in a breath to cry out but the same blood-slicked nail that slit him up the middle swipes across his throat and he chokes instead, gargling on his own blood, his torn throat spasming.
His eyes are wide in his face, pale as death. Speckles of blood have splattered across his cheeks, and when his gaze rolls upward and lands on his attacker, his eyes widen even further, and he chokes again. Somehow despite the ragged flaps of his neck he manages to speak, blood gushing from the wound as he does.
“Y—you,” he gasps, fingers scrabbling at his ruined throat. Blood is everywhere, coating everything, but there is no hunger, not for the blood of a man who has brought him so low. His blood will be like poison in his veins. “It’s... it’s impossible... you were... chained with... silver...” He coughs, and blood sprays the sheets.
“You are a fool if you think your silly human tricks can work against one such as I.” He gazes down at the dying captain dispassionately, at the sight of him gargling and choking on his own blood. “And an even bigger fool for thinking you could capture me and live.”
The captain’s lips part, but all that gushes out is more blood. He gives one last choked wheeze, his dying breath rattling in his chest as he slumps backward. He relaxes slowly, his head lolling to the side, his eyes wide open and unseeing, the blood from his neck slowing to a sluggish pulse, then stopping entirely.
Carefully, he reaches into the captain’s chest, the wound he had made earlier barely holding his organs in. He removes his heart, slowly, gently. Perhaps he will adorn the bow with the heart of the man who had once captained this ship, for the gulls to peck at. Yes, that will be best.
He turns and leaves the cabin, moving away from the mutilated body in the bed and the blood on the walls. By the time the doors swing shut behind him he has almost completely forgotten about the captain, unimportant as he was—for now... now, he has a crew to make.
He inhales the scent of the sea as he stands a moment, letting the moonlight drench him and cleanse him. It feels good to be free.
He dissolves into the shadows, and leaves nothing but blood and screams in his wake as he exacts his vengeance, carefully, economically almost. The last of the crew have drawn their final breath and open their eyes just as the sun begins to rise, and the first red rays of dawn bleed into the sky.
His fingers close convulsively around the smooth cool handle of the knife as he jerks upright, a wordless cry scraping past his throat as he swings blindly at an attacker who isn’t there. His breath saws in and out of his lungs, dragging and heavy, and his eyes dart around wildly, expecting to see something, anything—
The world rushes into place around him and his fingers loosen on the knife as his mind catches up with his body. He’s in his room, on his bed, the curtains swaying gently with the breeze cascading off the sea, the salt-sand smell of it filling the room. He breathes it in deeply, feeling his shoulders loosen as he shuts his eyes.
The knife falls onto the sheets and he puts his head in his hands, rubbing at his temples with the tips of his fingers. Every night these dreams fill his head, flashes so vivid that when he wakes he doesn’t know where he is, who he is. He can never remember the dreams, only bits and pieces—the sizzle of burning skin, lines of fiery pain at his wrists, an ache in his teeth that makes his whole body shudder, the taste of blood in his mouth, coating his throat.
He twists away from it, cringing away from the memories, the visions, whatever they are. His shaking fingers scoop the knife up again as he lies back down, feeling sweat sticking his hair to his nape, his forehead. He tries to get his breathing to slow and his heart to even, but he can still feel the nightmare lingering at the edge of his consciousness, the sweet stench of old memories that aren’t his own.
They always get worse just before he sets sail, like clockwork. As if something in his blood twists and digs into him, trying to keep him away from the sea, a rope tied beneath his ribs that’s tethered to something, and it’s pulling him—but whether it’s pulling him towards or away from it he doesn’t know.
Half an hour of gazing at the shifting shadows on the ceiling later he realizes that sleep will continue to elude him. He sits up, sliding his knife underneath his pillow again as he swings his legs of bed, standing. He moves to the window, twitching the rippling curtain aside and gazing out at the moonlight-drenched town outside.
It’s pretty, here—too pretty sometimes. Quaint, he supposes, with narrow cobbled roads bracketed by little houses that are stacked and sandwiched together, painted bright blues and greens and grays. The color of the sea that crashes against the shore of the town, the color of the heart of this place.
He can see the shore from here, see the way the waves writhe and curl in on themselves, hypnotized to sway and dance below the moon that pours her light down from the starry heavens. Tomorrow he has to take to those waters, the first time he will be at the helm, the first time he will claim his birthright and sail at no one’s command but his own.
He gazes out over the churning waves, the endless stretch of the ocean towards the horizon, the mist-shrouded fringes of territory he wants to chart himself, lands no human eyes have ever seen. He wants that, wants to conquer the sea as his father had once conquered it—or so he’s been told. He never knew his father.
Something in his chest catches at the sight of that misty horizon, something about the cold loneliness of it that seems to cry out to him, digging its talons into his heart. He can’t help but think that there’s something out there, lying in wait for him to walk between its teeth and into its maw, though what it is, a force good or bad, or whether he wants to know what it is, he cannot tell.
He swallows, feeling uneasy suddenly, the sea suddenly seeming sinister, off-kilter. The waves seem to curl into demented smiles, the wind howling and shrieking with manic laughter, the tides curving as if to beckon him towards a trap it knows he will fall into.
Abruptly he turns and moves back towards his bed, feeling cold. He turns his back to the window as he attempts to court sleep once more, and when he finally succeeds, his fingers have wrapped fully around the knife beneath his pillow, the hilt colder against his skin than it should be.
“It’s a fine day, isn’t it?”
The sun beams brilliantly down from the crisp blue sky, cloudless and bright. The wind is brisk but not biting, and the waves are strong but not forceful. It’s ideal for sailing; the weather has attracted dozens of people to the docks, and the wide concave crescent of the shore is dotted with ships, the horizon littered with several more.
The unease he had felt the previous night has faded almost entirely from his mind, and he remembers nothing of the dream, just as he never does. He’s grown so used to stowing the worry away that he does it almost unconsciously, turning away from the all the unanswered questions and the lingering feeling that he is seeing this place for the last time.
“What?” He turns toward the man beside him, who has his thumbs hooked into his braces, puffing on a wide, short pipe.
“I said it’s a fine day,” the man repeats, nodding toward the shore. “You’re a lucky man, Captain. Not everyone starts their maiden voyage on days as crisp as this. The gods must be pleased, or have you in their favor.”
“There is only one God,” is all he says in reply, eyes tracking the bright blue waves as they roll over the horizon, “and He favors no one.”
The man only laughs. “Just you wait till you get home, Captain Țepeș,” he says. “You won’t believe that anymore.”
He turns to the man, whether to ask him what he means or whether to tell him that he’s wrong he doesn’t know—nor does he find out. Someone calls his name and he turns, a hand automatically drifting to his hip, where his sword is tucked into his belt. A tall, proud-nosed man in sweeping black priest’s robes is gliding towards him, looking faintly disgusted at the prospect of being at the docks. It’s admittedly not the nicest part of it, that’s for certain—there are fishermen gutting their fresh catches in plain sight, and men weaving their nets, untangling the thick rope and talking loudly over the general bustle of the crowd.
“Captain Țepeș,” he says, inclining his head. “The Bishop requests your presence.”
“Now?” He glances back at the Seafarer, the ship nearly readied in the hands of his crew, the sails dropping slowly, billowing outward in the wind. He turns back to the priest and his expression doesn’t change, merely one of his eyebrows lifting.
“Yes, now,” he says, and there’s the slightest of edges to his voice. “Is there a problem, Captain?”
It is all Adrian can do not to sneer, but he manages to nod graciously instead. “None at all,” he says. “Do lead the way.”
He glances back at the man he had spoken to earlier, intending to say something to him, but when he looks back the place he had been standing is empty, the sunlight arcing off the surface of the water winking at him instead. The words stutter and die at his lips, and he feels his brows draw together.
“Captain, we do not have all day,” the priest’s voice says testily, and he turns, startled. “What? Oh, yes—yes, I’m... I’m coming...”
He gives a little shake of his head and glances back once more where the man had been standing before turning and following the priest away from the docks. “So,” he says, attempting to sound conversational, “did the Bishop tell you of what he wishes to speak to me about?”
“I do not inquire after the private matters of the Bishop,” says the priest distantly. Adrian gives up after that; he’s never liked the priests and deacons the Bishop surrounds himself with, and they’ve never liked him in turn. They’ve always thought he was after their position and favor in the eyes of the Bishop, but Adrian had never wanted to turn to the cloth. Not forever, anyway. He’d loved the sea too much for that. And he still does.
The priest leads him—unsurprisingly—past the church, further toward the port. Adrian has never been inside the church, not once. He’s never been allowed inside, and whenever he’s tried, the priests barred the doors and told him that by order of the Bishop he wasn’t to step inside. It had grown more apparent as he got older, and the few times he had asked after the reason, the priests told him they knew nothing, and that if he wanted to know, he should ask the Bishop.
He’s done that too, on many occasions. He never got answers, and eventually he had stopped asking. But he’s never stopped wondering why.
The priest stops at the tall, lean building that sits at the very edge of the docks, one that hangs over the water. He recognizes it as the place where all the paperwork is done, all the records are kept and the charts are stored. He’s never been inside, though he passes by it every day.
“The Bishop is expecting you,” the priest says haughtily. “Second floor.”
Adrian doesn’t bother thanking him; he strides away without acknowledging him, swinging himself onto the stairs and loping up three at a time. He’s not even short of breath once he leaps onto the second floor, reaching the top step—where he freezes, arrested at the sight of the room he’s just entered.
It’s devoted entirely to maps and charts, walls papered with them and the entire western wall painted over with a massive map that stretches from the New World in the west to Japan in the east. In the very center lies the Mediterranean, the heart of the world, the center of all land in all its glory. The eastern wall is made entirely of glass, allowing him a bird’s-eye view of the sea, its endless blue waves rippling and churning below the sun.
The Bishop is standing by the window, his back to Adrian. His arms are looped behind his back as he gazes out over the ocean, and his expression where Adrian can see in the reflection of the glass is remote, dispassionate almost. The harsh light turns his form into a silhouette, the sunlight bracketing his tall, lean form.
“Bishop?” he ventures cautiously, fingers loosely resting on the hilt of his sword. It gives him comfort somehow, solace, as if merely knowing the blade is there is enough to reassure him. “You wished to see me?”
The Bishop turns, his expression unchanging. The light slanting in from behind him sets his face in harsh, forbidding lines, and again Adrian is hit by that uneasy feeling deep in his gut, one that whispers caution in his ear, telling him there is something wrong, that there is something that’s changed, and not for the better.
“I did,” the Bishop says, dipping his head in the slightest of nods. His face is as familiar to Adrian as his own, if not more so; this man had raised him, had found him in the burning remains of his home and had taken him in, given him a home and given him a purpose. It was him who had told Adrian about his father, how he had been the best sailor east of the New World and how he had lost his life at sea serving the church as he had all his life. And he had been the one to teach Adrian to do the same.
“I have something of an objective for you, Captain Țepeș,” he says, moving forward so that he’s standing directly in front of Adrian. “Something I need you to do for me.”
Adrian feels his brows draw together. “I set sail in an hour,” he says. “Wouldn’t an objective be... ill-advised at such short notice?”
“Oh, you will be up to this task,” says the Bishop with a faint smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “I am sure of it. You wished to captain your own vessel, I might as well give you a purpose besides... well.” His smile turns slightly crooked. “Trade. You should be free to chart lands, pursue, obtain.”
“What do you mean?” He tries—and fails, probably—to mask the hesitation in his voice. Something about the Bishop’s knowing smile and the calculating way he’s looking at him makes him feel uncomfortable, exposed almost.
“Have you heard of the family Belmont?”
Adrian shakes his head, at a loss in the face of such a sudden, out-of-place question. “Yes, of course I have—but I fail to see what this has to do with—”
“Then you know,” the Bishop says, his ringing voice cutting through Adrian’s with ease, “that they were branded heretics by the church, excommunicated for their crimes and their dealings in black magic. And you know how they fled like cowards, taking to the seas, and... commandeering our vessels after we seized their property.”
“They turned to piracy,” Adrian translates. “Yes, I’ve heard.”
“Well, we were under the impression that their line had extinguished itself,” the Bishop says, turning and walking towards one of the maps nearby, mounted on an easel. It shows an intricate positioning of the Black Sea, draining into the Mediterranean. Wallachia’s port is at the center, the surrounding lands outlined clearly. “Died out somehow, ridding us of their stain rather effectively.”
Adrian’s eyes narrow. “But?”
The Bishop heaves a sigh. “But,” he says, “that is rather unfortunately untrue. It seems there is one left alive. A ship was spotted near the coast, one bearing the Belmont family crest. They got close to the port—too close. Before any action could be taken, however, they had disappeared. They went east, towards open sea.” He taps the map, at the slender channel that leads to the Mediterranean.
Adrian’s eyes never leave the map. “You want me to find them.”
“Yes,” the Bishop says. “Find them, and bring the captain back here so that we may... give him a proper farewell.” He laughs a little and Adrian feels something in his chest twist disagreeably. “No one—not even the Belmonts—can live without God. They brought this upon themselves when they decided to fly black colors on their masts. Death was always waiting on the other side.”
“I already had a charted route,” Adrian protests. “I cannot go on a wild goose chase hunting down some excommunicated pirate.” The word sounds and tastes tarnished and bitter almost in his mouth; his father had been killed by pirates, and ever since he’d found out, he’s wanted to wipe them all out. Leeches, who take what others have and have earned, godless savages. The world would be well rid of them.
“There is none more fit for the task,” says the Bishop, and yet again his smile doesn’t reach his eyes. “Will this not be fit vengeance for your father?”
Adrian clenches his jaw at the mention of his father, his fingers twitching into fists. He does want to avenge his father, and he does think that what the Belmont family did was cowardly and sacrilegious and disgusting—but something in him doesn’t feel ready just yet, to have blood on his hands.
“You would be doing this country and our church a great service,” the Bishop goes on, turning his head slightly towards Adrian, affording him a glance of his small, cold smile. “Perhaps it would help you to know that the Belmonts were allies with the filth that murdered your father and even aided in his capture...?”
Adrian feels his breath catch violently in his throat. “What?”
“Yes,” says the Bishop, clearly enjoying himself. Adrian hardly notices; everything seems to be swimming in front of his eyes, indistinct and far away. “I’m sure they all rejoiced at his death, loyal as he was to our cause—as are you.”
Adrian stares straight ahead out the window, watching the waves shimmer and dance, feeling the same slow, hot, powerful rage roll over him that he had felt when they had first told him how his father had died. He had never known his father, but he knows that he had been there for the first few years of Adrian’s life, a warm if not slightly detached presence. The sea was in his blood, the same blood that runs through Adrian’s veins. The same blood that desperately wants revenge.
“Where was the ship last seen?” he asks.
The Bishop’s frigid smile widens. “So you will bring the captain back here for the church, as soon as you can?”
If I don’t kill him first. “I will.”
“Excellent.” He sweeps towards Adrian, holding out a rolled up chart. “Take this. You will need to cross beyond the borders of the land you know, and that family has been roaming the seas for nigh on ten years. They know the seas better than you do, though you’ve studied. Maps and charts often cannot give you everything. Bring him back, alive. He must be alive. I don’t care what condition he’s in as long as he draws breath. And return as swiftly as you can.”
“I will,” Adrian says again, stiffly, taking the charts. “I swear.”
“Good,” the Bishop says, and his eyes are cold and hard. Adrian stands straighter, loosing a breath. “What of his crew?”
“Slaughter them, maroon them, drown them, do what you wish with them,” says the Bishop dismissively. “I want only the captain. No one else. Perhaps his First Mate as well, in case he’s managed to breed more of his filthy family.” He looks disgusted by the very thought, and Adrian feels inclined to agree.
“What’s his name?”
The Bishop raises his eyes to Adrian’s, his face hardening. “Trevor Belmont.”
“I’ll bring him to you,” Adrian promises. “As soon as I can.”
“Perhaps if you bring him here soon enough,” the Bishop says, turning away, “after he is tried by the Church for his crimes, you may be the one to deliver justice.”
Adrian swallows, his throat dry. “I will bear that in mind.”
“Go now,” says the Bishop, turning his back to Adrian, “and do not return until you find him.”
Adrian turns, stalking down the steps and into the sunlight. He stops there for a moment, feeling the salty spray of the sea cut through the heat. It should smell familiar and comforting, but now—now all he can smell, hear, feel, see and taste is anger. Anger, and revenge. This is what he was born for. And he will see it done.
He strides onto the Seafarer, fingers tightening around the charts he’s holding. He spreads them out, gazing hungrily at the lines traced there, the bearings and the latitudes and longitudes that have been plotted. He will find Trevor Belmont, and he will kill him. If it’s the last thing he does.
“Weigh anchor,” he calls, moving to stand at the helm. “Full canvas.” His eyes fixate on the horizon, his only destination now. Nothing else matters, he thinks as the ship erupts into life around him, shouts and the sound of sails lowering, metal being scraped against metal. Nothing.
“Where to?” his first mate—a man Adrian doesn’t really know, but was provided with for the voyage, tradition outweighing his preference to sail without one—asks, raising a brow, and Adrian grins, holding up the charts. “We have our heading,” he says. “We go east until we find them, then we go wherever the sea takes us.” He gazes out over the sea, feeling his heart soar—he has a purpose now, something to live for. And he won’t let it go.
“Tell me,” he says, turning to the man beside him, “what do you know of the family Belmont?”