The Skull of Dracula

Lara Croft studied the map of the old cemetery under the light of the full moon. What she was looking for lay somewhere under her feet, somewhere under the 1000 graves was the key to opening the great tomb that lay halfway across the world on the southern tip of Australia. Despite the treasures she knew she could find; she never explored the cemeteries and tombs in this particular place for fear of what she might find; the living dead.

Granted, Lara has dealt with creatures of the living dead before and came out on top. This one was different though, a creature that has been killed many, many times and always found a way to come back again and again. He has command over others like him, and commands them without ever having to say a word. She shone her light on the tombstone she was looking for illuminating the name of on the specific grave she was looking for; COUNT DRACULA.

---

The man crouched behind the tombstone in disbelief of what he was seeing; a lone musclebound girl in her mid-twenties was digging up a grave. Not just any old grave, but that grave. She had already removed the seal that weighed well over 300 pounds like it was made of mere cardboard and gotten to the Blue Topaz Pendant and the skull. His skull.

He could have completely blindsided the girl, locked her inside the grave along with the pendant and the skull and no one would be the wiser. Heck, would anybody even miss her? At best, she would simply show up on a missing person's report with no connection to him.

But he wanted to give her a chance to explain herself. At least that's what he told himself.

“What do you think you are doing?” His voice rang out over the cemetery that was already illuminated with an eerie blue light.

---

Lara looked around for the source of the voice, but it came from everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

“Who said that?” Lara looked around but found no one.

“Me!” Again, the voice came from everywhere and nowhere. “You have no idea what will happen if you move that pendant away from that skull!”

“Let me guess,” Lara scoffed, “all Hell will break loose on the Earth, blah, blah, blah. Been there, done that.”

“You insolent little girl. You have no respect for anything!”

“I'd show you more respect if you come out of the shadows!” Lara blindly shot an arrow into the darkness.

“Interesting,” the voice said in a softer tone, “arrow shafts made from Hawthorn wood and covered with combustible liquid. Maybe you're not as ill equipped for what is about to happen as I first thought.”

“I'm usually prepared,” Lara looked in the direction in which she shot her arrow, she could see the figure of a man not much older than she was, holding the arrow she previously shot. She held her bow at the ready.

“I am not your enemy!”

“Then come into the light where I can see you,” Lara called out as a male figure slowly stepped out of the shadows. “My name is Lara Croft.”

“Croft? As in Lord Richard Croft?”

“He was my father.”

“I worked with him once. Just once, he was a hard man to work with,”

“He...had his reasons for being the way he was,” Lara responded, “but we don't need to go into that now. You still haven't told me who you are.”

“My name is Van Helsing.”

“Van Helsing? From the Dracula myth?”

“You of all people should know that there is more truth to myths than most people are led to believe,” Van Helsing said, “in fact in some cases the fact that something is called a myth is in and of itself a myth.”

“If you really are Van Helsing you would be well over 200 years old!”

Van Helsing let out a laugh, “like you I am from a family line. I am his great, great grandson.”

Lara held the skull she lay the pendant on in her hand, looking at the elongated canine teeth. “And this is really the skull of Dracula?”

“And that pendant is the only thing that is keeping him from coming back to life. If you remove that from the skull, his entire body will be reanimated, and he will regain command of his entire undead army.”

“And just how many people are in his undead army?”

“This entire cemetery is dedicated to all of the lives he's made a part of his army,”

“There are 1000 graves in this cemetery!”

“Now you're getting the picture,”

“There is a tomb on the Southern tip of Australia that this pendant is the key to,”

“And what, pray tell is inside that tomb that is so important?”

“I don't know exactly,” Lara said slowly, then smiled devilishly as she took the pendant off the skull, “but I'm willing to find out.”

All at once the skull jumped to life, energy poured into it, and a human form began to take shape.

“On second thought,” Lara tried to bring the pendant back into contact with the skull, but to no avail.

“It doesn't work that way!”

“Of course it doesn't!” Lara tossed the pendant aside.

“We're going to have to take Dracula out,” Van Helsing called out as Lara aimed her bow at Dracula and fired a shot, “which won't be so easy.”

Dracula let the arrow pierce its way through him. “You think that will stop me?”

Van Helsing looked at the old castle that sat high on a hill about a mile away. It was ancient and foreboding with high walls and a large impenetrable door. “We can't let him reach the castle!”

“What happens when he reaches the castle?” Lara had to ask.

“That's when he'll be able to come into full power and be able to command the undead!”

“We don't want that to happen!” Lara fired another arrow into Dracula, but again it merely passed through him. “What?”

“Right now, he's just a phantom; it's when he reaches his castle and his followers do their incantations that give him his full power that we can fight him.”

“It would have to work out that way,” Lara rolled her eyes at Van Helsing, “usually does.”

Dracula took off towards the castle while taking the form of a bat, leaving Van Helsing & Lara standing there watching him fly away.

“We need to get to the castle before he does,” Van Helsing stated.

“That is painfully obvious!” Lara motioned towards her Ducati Monster; a motorcycle she modified to reach impossible speeds.

“I don't do motorcycles,” Van Helsing groaned.

“You do now!” Lara pulled Van Helsing onto the back of the cycle as she revved the cycle up, reached over and picked up the pendant.

“We're not going to need that thing now!”

“Good thing you don't, because I do!” Lara punched on the accelerator and the cycle took off towards the castle.

“How fast does this thing go?”

Lara shrugged. “So far, I can only get it to go to 300mph.”

“Only 300?” Van Helsing gasped.

“Yeah, I know I can eventually make it go faster; I know I can.”

“F-faster?”

“If you say so.” Lara guided the cycle up the narrow path that lead up to the main castle, traveling miles in mere seconds, swooping and swerving under low lying trees and around overgrown shrubbery. “Time for a little fun!”

“Fun?” Van Helsing looked ahead. The bridge was out, but it felt like the cycle was moving even faster as it moved towards a 100-foot gap. “Oh hell no.”

“Quiet, I need to concentrate!” Lara was trying to concentrate on what she needed to do, one bad move would send them falling a minimum of two miles straight down to their deaths.

The cycle rocketed off the ground, as it did Van Helsing made the mistake of looking down, which only caused him to violently vomit into the gap. This didn't bother Lara, as the cycle flew over the 100-foot gap and the front wheel touched the ground on the other side, the momentum pulled the bike forwards letting the back wheel touch the ground.

“You OK back there?”

“No.” Van Helsing whimpered, as he tried to clear his mouth of the god-awful taste.

The cycle came to a stop at the great doors to the castle, which was ajar. “Well, we've arrived.”

“I never thought I would be so happy to see this place!” Van Helsing began kissing the ground on which Castle Dracula stood.

“Really? Really?” Lara frowned as her eye caught a mild glimmer in the ravine below, “what do we have here?”

Van Helsing looked down at the shimmering object. “Looks like a rusty old crucifix.”

“Now that we have a firm grasp of the obvious,” Lara sized it up, it was at least as big as she was, “it's a very large one at that!”

“Shame there's no way down to get to it!”

“Oh,” Lara pulled a rope out of the motorcycle trunk, “there's always a way.”

“You're not going to climb down into there, are you? You have no idea what you'll find down there?”

While Van Helsing was bitching like a little girl, Lara had secured the rope to her motorcycle and began climbing down to where the crucifix was. “There's only one way to find out.”

“We don't have time for all of this you know. Just because we beat Dracula to his castle, doesn't put us in a position to defeat him. We need to find a way to defeat him!”

Lara looked up at Van Helsing, was the guy really that stupid? She tied the rope to the crucifix, then scurried up the rope. “Once we get this crucifix up here, that's all we'll need.”

“Right,” Van Helsing helped Lara with the crucifix. That's when they both heard a loud chanting coming from inside the castle.

“Creepy karaoke,” Lara muttered, “that's never of the good!”

“That means his undead followers that were already inside the castle are trying to solidify his body.”

“His followers are in solid form, correct?”

“Of course!”

“Good,” Lara pulled out her bow, “come on, let's take out these followers.”

“I don't know about this.”

“You are a descendant of one of the greatest vampire killers in history, are you not?”

“I am, but over the past 150 years, there has been little need for that!”

“So, you're...”

“Just the keeper of the cemetery,” Van Helsing said, “nothing more.”

Lara let out a faint growl, then began to move towards where the creepy karaoke was coming from. “Just follow my lead.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Grab the crucifix and stand against the light of the moon and hold it so it casts a shadow over Dracula's followers while I do my thing.” Lara waited for Van Helsing to get into position, but wanted to start attacking before the ceremony was complete. All at once the shadow of the crucifix appeared over those who were performing the creepy karaoke and she jumped into action.

She fired an arrow into the heart of one of the followers and they fell, then another then another.

“NOOOO!” Dracula's voice rang out. “The ceremony's not complete!”

“It's complete enough!” Lara cried out as she grabbed at Dracula and body-slammed him against the wall.

“That won't do anything to me.” Dracula hissed out with an evil smile.

“No,” Van Helsing stood atop the balcony holding up the large crucifix, the shadow was reflected onto Dracula, “but this will!”

Dracula moved away from the shadow.

“Keep moving around randomly, but always so the shadow is touching Dracula!”

“Understood!” Van Helsing began doing what Lara said.

“Come,” Dracula smiled, “let me... kiss you to make you more... malleable to my ways!”

“Kiss this!” Lara punched an arrow into Dracula's wide-open mouth, and it poked through the back of his skull.

“That won't kill me!” Dracula pulled at the arrow sticking out of his head, but it wouldn't budge.

“No, but I bet it's giving you one hell of a headache!”

Van Helsing moved the crucifix, so Dracula was directly under its shadow.

Lara shot out another arrow, this one landing in his chest.

“Close,” Dracula smiled, “but no cigar!”

“Oh, do shut up!” Lara fired another shot, again just missing his heart.

“Your aim is still off!”

“Is it?” Lara fired another shot, then another and another. “Look at the pattern I'm making!”

Dracula looked down, the arrows were circling around his heart. “Always so close!”

“Or maybe I was just distracting you!”

“For what reason?”

“So that I can do this!” Van Helsing leaped from the balcony with the crucifix poised so he was able to beat Dracula over the head with it as he landed, causing him to fall to the floor.

“You're down to your last arrow,”

“I know,” Lara touched the arrow to a nearby torch and the whole shaft began to burn.

Dracula looked down at the arrows that surrounded his heart, they were all covered in the same substance as the arrow that was on fire. Panic swelled up within, he was cornered. On one side Van Helsing was holding the crucifix over him, the other the flaming arrow was aimed at the center of his heart.

Lara let the bowstring go. The flaming arrow shot out hitting him in the heart dead center, igniting all of the other arrows.

All Dracula could do was let out a scream as he burst into flame as all of the arrows exploded like firecrackers sending tiny splinters of Hawthorn wood into his heart. When the show was over, all was left was his skull.

“Well, all that leaves us where we started,” Lara held up the pendant in one hand and the skull in the other. “So tell me, how did this pendant hold him at bay?”

“Truthfully,” Van Helsing sighed, “that is something that I did when I did that one job with your father. He just wanted me to hide it where nobody would think of looking for it.”

“Yeah, who would think of looking for the key to opening a tomb in southern Australia in a cemetery in Transylvania?”

“I knew that one day you would come looking for it.”

“Then why didn't you let me have it straightaway.”

“I didn't know who you were, what you would look like or even when, how or if you would ever show up.”

“So, what do we do with old Yorick here?”

“We can just return him to the grave you dug him up from.”

“Or we can simply do this,” Lara propped the crucifix up in the corner of the revival sanctuary and jammed the skull onto the top portion of the crucifix.

“He'll find a way to come back,” Van Helsing sighed.

“No doubt about that,” Lara looked at Van Helsing, “but like your great, great grandfather, you'll find a way to defeat him again.”

“But I'm not my great, great grandfather.”

“And I'm NOT Lord Richard Croft! I don't do things the way he did them. Never did, never will! I find my own way of doing things, and sometimes I surprise even myself when I do!”

“But--.” Van Helsing looked at the lifeless skull that was jammed onto the crucifix.

“You'll be fine,” Lara looked at the Blue Topaz Pendant that dangled from her fingers, reminding her she needed to get back to that tomb in the southern tip of Australia. She put it in the cycle trunk, then climbed onto the seat. “Want me to give you a ride back down to the cemetery?”

“As long as you don't break any speed records going down and find an easier route.”

“About that; I have a feeling that is the easier route,” Lara wince, as she looked down the gap the bridge used to cover, “unless you want to go straight down.”

Van Helsing looked down into the gap, he couldn't see the bottom. “I guess I'll be brave and ride down with you with you doing it your way.”

“Who knows,” Lara revved up the cycle as Van Helsing climbed onto the back of the cycle, “you may actually like it.”

“I don't think...” the cycle jumped from 0 – 300 within a second flat, it flew over the 100-foot-wide gap in no time at all, and the front wheel touched the other side. “That wasn't so bad!”

“I think you're getting the hang of this!” Lara sped the cycle down the hill leading away from Castle Dracula and back to the cemetery.