Abraham Van Helsing: The Darkness and the Light

Abraham Van Helsing: The Darkness and the Light Liesel has spent a lot of her life trying to live up to her father. He's where the hunting comes from, where the inventions come from, and where a lot of her confidence comes from. So when his journal turns up in The Darkness and the Light, it isn't just a clue to another vampire hunt. She's finally getting something back from somebody she's missed for a very long time. Then she starts reading it, and some of what she thought she knew about him falls apart. Abraham had hunted a vampire using the name Walt Melville in New York. The wooden stake went in, but instead of dying, the vampire became mist and escaped. Abraham had encountered something older and much harder to kill than the creatures he normally dealt with. He eventually met Elizabeth in Rome. He fell in love, stepped away from hunting, and became a father. There's a passage where he's writing with baby Liesel sleeping nearby, and everything he wants is right there with him. Dracula had been watching. He killed Elizabeth after Liesel was born. Years later, Liesel discovers that this wasn't the history she'd been given. Her mother wasn't simply an English woman who died of consumption. Her father's grief and his dealings with Dracula had been hidden underneath the version she grew up knowing. I liked how much that changes the journal. You're reading the things Abraham couldn't tell his daughter while watching her try to understand them long after the fact. He's not there to explain himself. She has to follow the pages, and somebody else is choosing which pages she gets. Dracula threatened the baby too. Abraham went to confront him, staked him and took off his head, believing he'd finally ended it. He came home and raised Liesel. He taught her to hunt. When killing her first vampire upset her, he told her the human being was already dead and the thing in front of her was a demon wearing that person's shell. That lesson comes back in about the worst way possible. Abraham eventually died, and Liesel buried him. Dracula later turned his corpse and kept him imprisoned without blood for more than a century. By the time Liesel finds him, Dracula has arranged for her to be locked in with him. He wants Abraham to feed on his own daughter. Killing the family was never enough for him. He wants to make Abraham participate in destroying what he loved. But Abraham recognizes her. He begs her to get away before the hunger takes over. Whatever his body has become, the father who loves her hasn't simply vanished. Liesel can see him in there, which means the explanation he gave her as a child doesn't hold up in front of her own eyes. She has to stake him anyway. She holds him as he dies, and he's still her dad in that moment. The part that stayed with me is what she does afterward. She's seen his secrets, his suffering, and what Dracula made of him. She doesn't let those final moments become the whole memory of her father. She chooses to remember the man who raised her and loved her too. Abraham gets to be more than a famous name behind Liesel's weapons. He was a good hunter who thought he'd won, a grieving husband, and a father who couldn't protect his daughter from every part of his past. This book made that history hurt. Source: Helsing: The Darkness and the Light, collecting Helsing #1–4.