To recap, Alessia di Racula is Kat and Dunstana’s honorary aunt, a friend of Estelle‘s who purchased some property in Porthaven via Estelle’s business connections — a reference, of course, to Dracula, though unlike the Count‘s business in London, conducted with 100% unironically honest intentions.
Now, across fiction Vampires’ powers and abilities are wildly inconsistent, and Alessia is really no exception, though for the most part, I did want to at least lean into the pre-Dracula, pre-Archetypal Pop Culture Vampire ideas and refer back to the older established folklore (do the extent that folklore can established), hence, her wolf form — traditional Vampires being associated with wolves before bats; given that Vampires are mostly creatures of Eastern/Central European folklore and vampire bats are endemic to the New World.
Mostly, though, I just like writing about Vampires.
Alessia di Racula interposes herself between Kat and Dunstana and the group of burglars who have so blatantly broken into her home.
“Hey,” one of the burglars whispers to the leader of the group. “You said this place was empty.
“I thought it was,” the leader whispers back. “But it doesn’t matter. We can deal with the kid, that tall dude —”
“Hey!” Kat exclaims.
“— and the anemic lady.”
The burglars step forward.
“Aunt Alessia,” Dunstana says, clinging to the Vampire’s leg. “I’m scared.”
“Hush now,” Alessia says gently. “No harm will come to you.”
Her scarlet lips curve up slightly as she smiles slightly.
“But as for you,” she says to the bandits. “You will most assuredly be harmed quite thoroughly and severely.”
The burglars don’t react.
“You violate the sanctity of my home,” Alessia indignantly says to the burglars. “Do not think the irony is lost on me. I, who cannot enter a home uninvited, having my own home invaded. You will pay for that offence, of course.”
She steps forward.
“But you have decided to heap indignity upon indignity,” she continues. “You have frightened and distressed the daughters of my dearest friend. For that, all the powers of long Undeath shall be brought to bear against you. Sorceries you cannot possibly imagine shall wrack your bodies, blast your souls, and shatter your feeble minds. I will give you one last warning — walk out under our powers now, or face my power and be dragged out.”
“What are you on about?” the leader of the burglars mutters.
“I think she’s a witch,” one of the others mutters.
“That just means she’ll run out of Magic before too long,” the leader notes. “We can’t run out of Sword.”
Alessia sighs.
“You are making a mistake, ” she warns. She waves her hand. The doors and windows snap shut.
“Seems to me,” the leader of the burglars notes, “that you’ve made a mistake. You’re the one who locked everything up.”
The Vampire tilts her head quizzically.
“Perhaps I was unclear,” she notes. “I am not locked in with you. You are all locked in here with me.”
“Neat trick,” the leader of the burglar concedes. “But you’ll need more than parlour tricks.”
“Oh, yes,” Alessia says. “I quite agree. Perhaps I can start with this.”
She bares her fangs and flashes her claws.
She leaps at the burglars and slashes at them in a blur of claws, then disappears into a cloud of dark vapours, re-emerging as a cloud of beating leathery wings and biting fangs.
“She turned into Bats!” one of the burglars cries. “No fair! That doesn’t even make sense!”
The cloud of bats coalesce back into Alessia’s human form and she promptly catapults one of the burglars across the room with a magically-enhanced backhand strike.
She strides forward and, mid-step, reshapes herself into a great, snarling wolf and leaps at one of the burglars.
“Cool,” Dunstana says.
She looks up at her sister.
“Hey, Kat,” she asks, her initial fear of the burglars proving quite unfounded. “Think Aunt Alessia could teach me how to do that Bats thing?”
FYI: if you’re ambushing somebody and they’re the one who lock the doors, you’re in for a bad time…
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