Richter Belmont as Dhampir fic, #2:
Summary: Olrox abducts Richter Belmont in retribution against Julia Belmont for the death of his lover, and takes him South, raising him among the Mexica. As an adolescent, exposure to Olrox's blood and a near-death experience triggered his transformation into a dhampir. At the time, Richter was furious.
Fast forward six years: Olrox has forged Richter into one of the most deadly warriors on the continent. Working together, the two have overturned the colonial empire in the French colonies. Now, they have voyaged to Europe, where the seer and sorceress Annette believes a far more terrible power is rising.
Except in coming to France, the young Dhampir risks meeting the people he was forced to leave behind, and making them grapple with who he has become.
Part 1 here. Just something I'm playing with and don't intend to post to AO3 until I figure out where this is going ;)
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Richter fished through his pockets for some spare change, when his hands came upon a bulging purse in his coat pocket. He pulled it out. Purple velvet, gold button. On opening it, he found it full to bursting with coins of every denomination. He shrugged and fished out a franc, flipped it at the barkeep with a smile.
“Keep the change,” he told him. He hardly minded being a spendthrift with his sire’s money. The man had enough of it. A weaker man might have felt the vampire owed Richter a debt for his abduction, the harsh training of his childhood, and the Turning. Richter rather felt everything that had happened after his kidnapping made up for it. He would have been targeted as a Belmont. His mother’s training hadn’t been enough to save either of them from Olrox. Olrox, on the other hand, had ensured his enemy’s son was more than a match for even him.
Richter sipped at the ale and lapped the rim. The barkeep, or whoever had brewed it, really had deserved his pourboire.
A shot rang out. Pure reflex made him duck when he did. A moment later, and a bullet buried itself in the wall.
Richter tracked the sound to the only man sitting, now standing, in the dark corner of the bar. An old man, with long white hair and square beard and most significantly, a smoking gun.
“Not again!” complained the barkeep.
Richter dodged again, knocking over the barstool. The next bullet went straight through his plate of food. “Hey,” he told the old man. “Knock it off. I’m just trying to have a meal here--”
Another shot, straight for the heart.
“What did I even do?” he asked, bewildered.
“I told you leeches that the next one of you who came looking for me, I’d leave his headless corpse hanging in the hall like a trophy.”
Richter groaned, holding up his hands. “I’m not looking for trouble—”
Another shot—
“Oh, fuck it,” he finally said, and sped across the room in a blur of red light. The man actually followed his movements and met him, pistol tracking his heart. Richter blurred around him to avoid the next shot, cursing—he hadn’t expected to burn through so much energy so soon—only to get impaled through the shoulder when the man brought up a knife in his offhand. He leaned into the blow though, tangled his legs up with the old man’s, and took him to the floor, wrestling his gun out of his left hand, pinning his right under his impaled shoulder.
The grizzled old goat bucked and kneed him in the balls, but he’d wrestled the Quechua boys too often to be bothered by that (that was one move Olrox would never do, at least not to Richter-- not because he was too refined, but because he said Richter would need those later. The old perv). The man bit at Richter’s neck and tore the skin, and Richter hissed, lunging to lock his jaws around the old man’s jugular, just as the old man pried another blade from his belt and set it at the small of his back.
“Do it,” the old man dared him. “Kill me. I’m going to die sooner than not anyhow. Do it, and I stab this straight through your spine. Think you’ll be able to walk again before the sun rises?”
This was getting fucking ridiculous.
Apparently someone else thought so too.
A presence overshadowed him, the kind he’d felt before only in the presence of very old vampires, or very powerful witches.
“Drop the blade, Juste,” came a voice in a clear tenor, the words free of any urgency. “<i>And take your fangs out from your grandfather’s neck, little Belmont.</i>”
He heard the words as much aloud as in his mind, where he’d only before heard the voice of his sire. That, as much of their content, shocked him into stillness.
Then the pressure of the blade against his back gave way, and he hurtled himself off the old man, wiping the saliva from his mouth.
“Grandfather?” he repeated dumbly, and then had a clear look at the newcomer.
He was beautiful. Tall, slender, androgenously lovely, with long, wavy hair of a shade of gold so pale it was almost white, and skin bloodlessly white as marble, the colour of a vampire who hadn’t fed in some time. His eyes were bright amber as a cat’s, and his mouth was open enough for Richter to see his eyeteeth were only as long as Richter’s.
Richter’s own mouth fell open. He had so many questions, but the old man cut him off.
“Belmont? Grandfather?” the man spat, squinting at Richter. “What gives, Alucard?”
Now that the grizzled hunter wasn’t trying to kill him, Richter endured his scrutiny, nonplussed, looking at the beautiful man for direction. “You’re a dhampir,” he breathed, looking at the man, who lowered himself to sit crosslegged across from him.
The man’s pale lips curved upwards. “Yes. Yes I am. Alucard.”
The bedside stories he’d heard of the half-vampire who’d fought alongside his ancestors flashed through his mind.
“I thought you were a myth.”
The man chuckled, his laughter as pleasing as the rest of him. “I suppose it’s my fault for not visiting your family more frequently. You’ll find though, that it becomes more difficult to track the passage of time after your first century or so.”
The old man pulled up a chair, still scrutinizing Richter with that implacable gaze. “Richter?” he said slowly.
Richter nodded. “Uh. Yeah. Richter Belmont.” He scratched the back of his head and offered the old man a sheepish grin. “I kill vampires. And you’re my grandfather?”
The old man didn’t answer, but turned to Alucard. “How?” he demanded, settling his pale eyes on the vampire.
The lovely dhampir didn’t blink. “I’ve always enjoyed a close relationship with the Belmonts and their Speaker cousins,” he told the old man, in the tone of someone giving a gentle reminder.
Richter did blink at what that implication.
“He wasn’t born like this. Julia would have said something.”
“No?” Alucard turned to Richter, examining him anew. “How fascinating. I suppose,” he said, thinking aloud, “extreme circumstances, such as starvation or disease, could trigger the change as a means of self-preservation.”
Richter didn’t say anything under that intense stare.
The old man got up and crouched down before him. “Grandson or not,” he said, growling, “same rules apply. I catch you sipping off anyone here-abouts, I’ll stake you as dead as any other vamp.”
Richter gave him a flat look. “No one tells me how to feed myself.”
Juste looked ready to draw his blade on him, when Alucard intervened.
“The boy’s not killing anyone, and based on his reception by the ladies of the Row, I’d guess they’d be considerably piqued at anyone who made him stop coming by.”
Richter flushed. “You know about that.”
“Did you think you were the only one who ever needed to feed discreetly without killing?”
“You…”
“It’s hardly my preference,” Alucard admitted. “I prefer to reserve the intimacy of the act for close companions.”
Richter eyed him up and down. “You’re hardly starving,” he decided. “Must be a lot of those close companions.”
Juste snorted. Alucard regarded Richter neutrally. “None at the moment,” he corrected.
“Then what are you eating?”
“Deer and cows, like any other man,” Juste told him.
Richter recoiled.
“What? If it’s good enough for a man to eat, it’s good enough for whatever you two are,” his grandfather retorted.
“What eating means to a human and what feeding means to a vampire—you can’t compare them,” Richter said, almost retching at the thought of animal blood. He’d drank it before out of desperation. It had been during those first months after his transformation, when he had still hated what he’d become, hated his sire even more for his role in it, and had been determined to deny all of his vampiric traits. It was more because of how they now linked him to his sire, than because of any childhood prejudice against his kind.
He'd retched up the blood of the alpacas he’d tried to drink. It wasn’t the taste of the blood, it was the sensation of their minds as his own brushed up against theirs, a mental reflex to glamor the victim if the paralyzing agent in his venom proved ineffective. Their minds were soft and dull, their consciousness had the mouthfeel of moldy potatoes next to the sparkling champagne tang of a human life.
Olrox had taught him better as soon as he’d finally given in and accepted the man’s guidance. He remembered, those first nights, sitting with the remainder of the tribe to plan their voyage away to find their missing people. He remembered Lily’s mother coming to them, wrist offered, and Olrox turning her away. “Very kind, my girl, but no, not this time,” he’d said, glancing significantly at Richter. “The first feedings are rarely controlled, and the boy would hate both of us if he harmed you.”
Technically, their sire-childe bond, though weaker than if Richter had been a full vampire, rather than simply a dhampir whose blood Olrox had awakened, should have been enough to let Olrox control him if necessary. Olrox had been surprisingly gentle with his fledgling though. He never used the bond for more than communication, or comfort.
So in those early days, as he learnt control, he hadn’t drank from anyone other than his sire.
In those moments, the bond opened fully, and they knew each other with pure honesty. He’d sensed his sire’s satisfaction at the completion of his revenge against Julia Belmont, but stronger than that was his sincere pride in Richter. His son, his student, his creation. Richter had guessed at the man’s feelings before the turning, but not their depth. And before, he’d loathed the man even more for it—what right did he have to treat him like a son, after he’d stolen him from his mother?—but after, he’d accepted it.
Olrox had fought for Richter, had suffered in creating him and suffered in keeping him. While Richter regarded it in large part as no more or less than what the man deserved for his actions, proximity and the constancy of the man’s affection had, in turn, made him somewhat less than indifferent.
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