Episode Recap: Crooked Steps

When you’re a member of a family as old as the Van Helsings, you can bet there will
be more than a few family secrets ready and waiting to be unearthed. Vanessa has
been learning that the hard way the past few years, but this week she may have
discovered the biggest doozy of them all. She might have to choose between
becoming a vampire or dying to protect her sister.

Following their departure from San Francisco, the sisters Van Helsing are off on a bit
of a post-apocalyptic road trip, searching for the Third Vampire Elder. It’s not
without its vampire attacks along the way, of course, but for possibly the first time
ever, it proves to be a benefit, as the blood spattered during the fight reveals a map
which takes them directly to a quaint little island with a less-than-quaint vampire
locked beneath its picturesque beaches.

This is no ordinary vampire elder, though. This one, in all his Victorian era Lestat
trappings, is actually Jacob Van Helsing, brother to their ancestor Abraham. Jacob
was there, he says, the day Abraham fought the Dark One and plunged into Hell or
some such dramatics. He, meanwhile, gave into the darkness inside him and was
turned.

He agrees to let his many-great nieces dispatch him -- after showing them the
location of a mysterious labyrinth -- if they agree to let him out, but that deal quickly
changes as the moments drag on. First he asks to be turned, then to be fed. When
Vanessa allows him to feed on her blood he reveals to her that history has a way of
repeating itself, and that it seems to be doing just that with the two of them. Vanessa
seems very much to be giving into the vampiric nature within her, just like Jacob.
And just like with him and Abraham, only one of the siblings will likely make it out
of the coming ordeal alive.

Vanessa is shaken up by this news and allows Jacob to escape, then uses the
impending chase to steal the collected totems from Scarlett. Jacob, meanwhile, fills
Scarlett in on the “only one can survive” deal before kicking the crap out of her and
leaving her in a clearing.

When the sisters head to the beach to stop him leaving the island, Jacob jumps
Vanessa, biting her and telling her to return to the old asylum and “rule with them.”
Vanessa answers by biting him so hard she literally rips his throat out and then
simultaneously punches him while eviscerating him, because just one isn’t enough.
Scarlett is horrified to see her sister changing into the thing they have spent so long
fighting, but that pales in comparison to the way Vanessa feels about the possibility
of Scarlett dying during the conflict, so in natural sister fashion, she tricks Scarlett
into leaving the beach just long enough to steal the boat and head back to the
mainland along.

Scarlett is not pleased.