DON'T OWN THE UNIVERSE SO DON'T HATE THE CHARACTERS I TRIED TO MAKE THEM GOOD.

NO FLAMES

He'd just dropped off his daughters at the babysitters on 147th street just down the block of his own apartment in the Bronx. The busy borough thrived with life of all cultures and despite the dirty streets and the occasional ruckus that usually ensued he barely noticed. Someday he would move to some other part of New York, one that he would like even more then his current residence, at least once his pursuers stopped looking for him. He imagined Maggie and Diana walking hand in hand through Manhattan with him decked in ruffled dresses and ribbons in their hair with buckled shoes and the indisputable wealth of their family radiating through their curling red hair and clothing; two little Malfoy girls walking with their father who would someday go and reclaim the family name.

But he wasn't a Malfoy right now he was David Clifford building superintendent, father and mother. His weeks were spent with his girls brushing hair, baking cookies, reading stories and sewing cloth dolls for his oh so humble girls. He was not wealthy in fact with that way they had to hide he had to pretend to be very poor. So when he wanted to buy those expensive dresses and toys he had to remind himself that he couldn't or else they would be discovered but his girls didn't mind.

They didn't care that daddy couldn't buy them expensive dolls, they liked the ones he made. And dresses? Oh the girls could do without the itchy lace. They were like his mother was in secret. Quiet, reserved and content just to be in his company and when he looked into their brown eyes he could see her there. They didn't look like her at all so it wasn't an immediate connection but when they smiled it was that same and their pale skin was always just a little pink like her despite all of the freckles. Their brown eyes were large and soft in a way his mothers' gray eyes were and they always saw through everything that he did.

Often Draco would awaken with the girls sitting on his bed. Maggie would smooth back the wild strands of his hair as she sat on the pillow next to his head and Diana would lay with her small feet barely dangling off the side with her head on his stomach sleeping soundly and he would always wonder how they were ever able to imitate his mother without having ever met her.

He crossed the cluttered street passing dirty men a boy with dreadlocks hanging off of a girl with hair threaded with blue thread and white go-go boots, a girl with a very fine thing ginger stubble and a transvestite that he knew from the bar, Remy, if he remembered correctly was her actual name. "Hullo Rem."

"Oh Davey how are you?" Remy hugged him tightly with one arm while the other fixed the pale powder wig on her head before it slipped off. Her rouge lipstick was smeared at the corners of her mouth and her heavily painted eyes were shimmering in the dimming twilight. She smelled like apples. "How are my girls?"

"Maggie and Diana are just fine. I've taken them to Mrs. Perez. But, what on earth are you doing out here right now? Aren't you due at the club?"

Remy's entire face morphed from soft and feminine to strong and definitely male.

"Oh yeah I was trying to call a taxi when the fucker just went right passed me. Ah honey you know I'd never hurt nobody especially no cabbie but this asshole just pissed me off. So I threw my shoe at the cab and had to wobble for it. But this pretty little boy girl helped me get my shoe and put it on me. What a little prince."

"Oh?" Draco said with an incredulous smile on his face. He took Remy by the elbow and led her to the other side of the street. "How about I hail a cab for you?"

"Oh no that's ok. I already called in sick. But besides that where are you going? Don't tell me it's that Irish pub!"

Draco shrugged. Fine, he wouldn't say it.

"Oh Davey, why?" Remy said in indignation. "You're planning to get drunk again?"

"I was planning to have a drink or two, it's a rare day when I have nothing planned."

"It wouldn't be a lonely day if you would just start seeing somebody you know. What about that nice Jewish girl? She's the one that visits her mother just down the hall from you, you know and she's getting her degree. And then there's Debbie from the Starbucks-oh she's had her eye on you since she graduated high school you know, and sure she's young but that only means that you have eye candy on your arm and that she would be eager to learn all there is to know what you like in bed. And then there's me."

"Not interested." Draco said with a playful smile, they always played these games. He nodded once to Remy before he walked passed her lifting an arm and waving. "I'll see you on the block."

"Sure, sure but you know you can't handle me!"

"Oh I know I could."

Later that evening he found himself walking towards 147th street to pick up his girls and had almost walked on top of the bald girl he'd seen earlier, the one that the boy with dreadlocks had called Prince Valiant. He leaned forward to get a good look at her-she smelled like fabric softener and sweat.

A runaway perhaps, just like him in those early days when he'd crashed in the streets with two starving babies swaddled in their hospital blankets after they had been released.

"Girl, wake up." He said poking her with the tip of his boot. She squirmed for a moment blearily blinking up at him through the fog of sleep. "What's your name?"

"Val."

"Valerie I suppose is the longer version, correct."

"Yeah." She said with a cracked voice obviously freezing. He could show her the crash spot where he and the girls had lived in before he'd been able to find a job-the abandoned tunnel near the troll that had become his friend.

But she looked so tired and cold and he wondered if anyone else was living there. She was rough but pretty even with her stubbly head. She could be beaten and raped and wouldn't be able to defend herself if someone happened upon her there. No, that certainly wouldn't do.

So he opted to take out his wallet and throw the largest bill at her, a 50 that she refused to take but ultimately shoved into her jean pocket.

"There is a shelter just down the block. Tell them that David Clifford sent you-that's a sure way to get in."

She didn't speak but solemnly nodded and already he could tell that she wasn't going to do as he had said. Smart girl, he thought. Not as trusting as he might have originally thought and he was glad. It was only too easy to read her thoughts her face was nothing if not a mirror to her internal feelings. She thought he was luring her to some abandoned building where presumably she would be raped.

"You don't have to go now though I recommend moving somewhere a little less obvious. The police will question once they see you because, honestly you don't look a day over sixteen."

"I'm seventeen."

"Good for you." He said to Val. He straightened himself and gasped at the cold seeping in through his coat and only imagined the cold Val felt. She was shivering. "Here," He said draping the thick coat over her shoulders. "Take it."

"No thanks man, I'm good."

"I live just that way, I'll be fine until I get home." He said with a smile and walked away without a word. He'd left a few single bills in the pocket of that coat and some change, enough for the girl to get some food and make a call on the payphone. Either way it wasn't his problem anymore. He'd done his civil duty, he'd tried to help.

"Thanks Mr. Clifford!" She shouted after him but Draco merely waved.

"Banana Pancakes!"

"No, but you're getting warmer. What about you Maggie?"

"Um…coffee!"

"Coffee? What on Earth makes you monsters think I would give you coffee?"

"Please!"

Maggie pouted up at her father who merely smiled back. Diana had already begun to talk about something else along the lines of puppies. She wanted a puppy and wondered if they could have one in their little apartment. Draco answered with a curt, not right now but as soon as we move maybe, and Diana had been content in that.

"Bubble tea! Can we have bubble tea, daddy?"

"Of course." He said leading them towards the tiny shop that had caught Maggie's attention. The door opened with a chime and Draco was surprised to see Val there with a girl with brightly colored purple hair and paint stained coat. He hadn't seen the runaway in over a month.

Val was filthy.

"Daddy that girl looks sick." Maggie said in a low whisper with her eyes trained at Val but she couldn't smell it like he could. The sweet burnt sugar that danced around her and possibly in her veins if the scorch marks at the inside of her now folded arms said anything. A sweet tooth as the fey called them and he wondered if Mabry had to do with it.

"She's just tired, Maggie."

"Oh."

As they ordered their tea Draco couldn't help but wonder how she had managed to escape the revels that she had obviously been in. Wizards and Witches usually attended such occasions with the fey and left with their lives and sanity intact. Muggles on the other hand never escaped and if they did, they never looked like that were never marked with burns and they never smelled like magic.

It only confirmed the Mabry theory-one of her sweet tooth's, one of the perhaps many that she had conned into poisoning the fey. He'd tell Ravus if he could but Wizards and Witches were strictly forbidden to speak in the personal dealings of the fey.

They could attend the revels together and perform their magic together but when it came to their laws they were not permitted to be involved which was why his mother had been able to flee imprisonment to live with the fey without fear of being found. But he'd found the tree woman dangling from her iron fence burned and dead and shivered. It was a haunting memory.

The three had settled at a booth near Val and her odd companion with their tea. Maggie busily sucking up bits of tapioca through the thick straw while Diana merely sipped now and then. But Draco kept staring at the girls wondering if he should say hello.

Val turned her attention towards him for a moment and tried to smile but her skin was too tight. Her friend lifted a brow at this but waved before both girls walked out of the shop without looking back.

"Daddy who was that?" Maggie asked wit her brown eyes trained on him like Diana.

"Is it somebody from the shelter, Daddy?" Diana asked.

"Yes." He lied. "Yes, but I think she's finally going home."

The rest of their time in the bubble tea shop passed quickly and again they were on their way home, the girls clutching tightly to his hands until they were too tired to walk and the side walk was too cluttered. Draco scooped the girls in his arms and made his way the rest of the way home, even with them sitting on his lap in the cramped subway where Diana fell asleep.

When they made it into their little apartment Diana was still asleep and Maggie was close to joining her so Draco left them in his bedroom and quietly shut the door. It had been a long day where before hitting the shop they'd been to strawberry fields in central park and before that the museums.

"Master is feeling tired?" Pips the house elf asked from the kitchen. Her golf ball sized green eyes were half hidden by the hat the girls had made her. Draco often wondered why she had decided to follow him into his hiding. She wasn't a prisoner to the Malfoy's anymore, if her little dress was anything to go by, it was simply that she liked him. She'd always had.

"Just a bit, I saw someone."

"Someone Master Draco was it one of them? Was it one of the Knights comes to take you?"

"No it wasn't the knights. They can't track me here even if I did use magic-with all the exiled fey running about using their magic it would be impossible." He sat on the coffee table and shook his head. "No it wasn't a Knight it was one of the sweet tooth's, a girl that I met and tried to help."

"Oh poor things those sweet tooth's are just slaves to the magic." Pips said with a sad shake of her head. "Master can't be feeling bad about that, Master should just be happy that he tried help at all. Master doesn't usually do that."

"I guess I don't." He said with a sigh. He motioned for the cup in her hands, steaming green tea, and down the scalding liquid in one large gulp. He felt tired. "I'm going to sleep."

When his eyes opened it was well passed after dark and there was a banging on his door so hard that he was surprised that it hadn't been broken down. For a moment he thought it might have been Mrs. Verge's son getting arrested again and the old woman was knocking just to leave her grandson there as she had done on many the occasion but this could not be her.

He sat up immediately and made his way towards the bedroom where Pips had the girls dressed and kept them quiet. She reached a hand to him her dusky palm up. "Side long apparition sir, we must be going it's the ogre." She said and he took her hand.

They appeared in a dark room draped with plastic sheeting and books. The smell of magic was heavy like iron. It was Ravus' home, of course and the troll was there. But he wasn't alone he was with Val both sleeping soundly surrounded by flaked dried blood.

"What's happened here?"

"My heart was cut out of my chest." Ravus whispered though Val continued to sleep. "She brought it back to me."

"Oh Uncle Ravi is with the sick girl from the shelter. Daddy said she was going home, was home here uncle Ravi?" Diana asked as she eased towards the green troll who sighed in exasperation.

"I suppose, little one." He said with a terrifying smile that didn't phase Diana or Maggie one bit. He winced and turned towards Draco with an apologetic look. "If you could?"

"Of course." Draco said easily picking Val up and placing her on the nest of lavender scented quilts. He turned towards Ravus who was already making himself comfortable with the help of Pips who pillowed a bundled jacket beneath the trolls head like a pillow while the girls draped a fallen quilt over him.

"The knights came." Ravus said quietly. "They came right before Mabry and her weapon of choice."

"The ogre was sent to my home as well though I can only assume to kill me."

"Or perhaps take your girls, how Mabry loves them so." Ravus said with a sardonic smile. "Their hair is the color of wine and their lips of pomegranate," He recited one of Tamason's many poems. "They so looked like her but now, Mabry is dead."

"Is she? Well, I won't say I mourn her passing."

"No indeed not."

"So what does the girl have to do with this and you?"

And Ravus recounted the story from beginning to end, Valerie Russell the runaway had fallen in with Dave and Lolli and had begun to steal the magic they called never, how she had saved him and then become his student in swordsmanship.

"Ah but you love her." Draco noted as he watched the girls snuggle against the still sleeping Val while Pips brewed coco for Draco and herself.

"I was on my way to apologize to her when Mabry came and well, you know the rest."

"And the mortal returned to her troll his bleeding sticky heart. That's romantic when you think on it."

"I would rather think so." Ravus said already sitting. "The knights were here, Draco, they will return and even if they know that I cannot reveal anything they will still come. I'm afraid that you must leave New York all together."

Draco nodded, oh how he understood. He'd have to leave again and start over only this time he could go where ever he wanted. Some great mounting populace filled with other creatures of myth with enough magic in them to confuse the Knights as they searched for him. But where to go?

"And what about you friend, will you stay here or will you follow the girl?"

Ravus waved Pips away as the elf tried to brush the tangles in his inky hair and stared with black golden eyes at the three sleeping girls. "I will stay. This way the knights will not think I know where you are. If I leave with her then they will begin to look for me and ultimately come for Valerie. You can ask the king of the unseelie for refuge. You are a friend of his."

"I heard that Roiben killed Nicneven."

"He did and also took her thorn crown for the love of a changeling after Naphamael died."

"Oh you mean the pixie Kaye?"

"You know her?"

Draco nodded with a smile marring his handsome face, he'd seen her at his cousins funeral and mostly in pictures and while no one was able to see through the heavy glamour she wore he could see it, green skin, long limbs and black alien eyes staring at the body, dropping a container of nail polish her favorite shade, in the casket. She was horrifyingly beautiful amongst the flowers and humans.

"She is familiar with estranged family with no magical abilities whatsoever. If they know anything about Wizards and Witches it is what they learn in stories. She's entirely too human to be fey, if you ask me. I caught her once trying to smoke a cigarette if you can believe it. She nearly died." He sighed. "Janet used to write about her friend all the time while we were children. I think Janet was the only squib I liked."

But he stopped talking because thinking of Janet hurt too much and he had to think about his family, his new family. His daughters who didn't look like him or like their mother, Maggie and Diana looked like Janet.

"Ravus, you are telling me, that I should move into a town filled with the Fledglings'? Good God man, they cannot even control themselves and you expect me to go by 'honor thy blood sucking parasitic neighbor' in content as they secret venom from their lips?"

Ravus shrugged slightly embarrassed but stuck to what he had said which had merit. The Knights were terrified of what they could not understand and the Fledglings that believed they were like the ancient ones were one of the few that terrified them. If Draco and his family moved to either of the city's in which the covens lived they would be safe as long as the Fledglings stayed.

It was the perfect cover.

"Alaska would be perfect, that family doesn't move and no one there questions them. They also feed on the animals there so there is no reason to fear for your family." Ravus grunted. "or the Mexican coven, who are a bit more dangerous but they protect their city with gusto."

"And what of the Seattle coven?"

"They are perfect, completely perfectly annoying in their goodness and guileless in their opinions." Ravus sneered. "They do little to hide themselves. The pact leader works in a hospital while the 'children' attend the local high school-they do not hide who their mates nor do they try to hide their beauty. It seems lost to them that if they are discovered then the rest of us shall be as well."

"Stupid."

"Yes, and one has fallen in love with a human girl and refuses to make her. The Voltari are in frenzy for her, she seems immune to their power but not to mine, much to my amusement. She falls easily into glamour like any normal human." Ravus sighed. "How I wish the ancient ones would awaken but then, they are beyond all hearing and moving and are merely content to live in their coffins in the ground."

"Like Those Who Must Be Kept?" Draco joked.

"You compare it to that novel. It's nothing like that, the first of that particular kind died out long ago burning himself with the sun as soon as he learned what eternity truly meant. The others, his dark children were burned but healed in time only to make more and more of them and the end result of the children making more in their early years are the diseased ones who believe that they are vampires."

"But they're walking corpses." Draco said with a nod in confirmation from Ravus. "The disease has made them only live off the blood like vampires but their hearts don't beat, they were not reborn. Inside all of their organs have begun to slowly rot from disuse and their skin is toughened from the sun but has that horrific shimmer. Did you know that once I spied one of the Fledglings one of the diseased. I saw her for what she truly was, seeing through the layer or marble flesh to see the rotted muscle and rotting innards and I almost smelt the omnipotent stench of death when she opened her mouth to speak." Draco shivered at the memory.

"It is like to see through your glamour. A wizard can see through your magic but only slightly and in one quick glance, just the confirmation that what we see is false. It was the same when I looked at her."

"The diseased are not but corpses with the taste of glamour, of that old magic that vampires have and the venom is the end result of what they are filled with. The blood turned to venom, all of their bodily fluids turned to venom. That is why some call them the Death Plague." Ravus said. "But the Diseased are you best bet for safety. If you leave now the knights wont be able to track you r magic. There is too much going on because of the uproar of the unseelie court."

He placed a large green hand on Draco's shoulders and stared at him squarely in the eyes.

"Go and live freely my friend. I will try to deter them as much as I can."

And that was how Draco Malfoy or David Clifford found himself in Forks Washington seated on the couch of his new neighbor while his daughter played upstairs with the daughter of the man who owned the house.

Charlie Swan.

"Well, Mr. Clifford, welcome to Forks."

Draco could only nod hoping that Charlie did not feel his immediate disdain as he looked at the girl, Bella's boyfriend, who sat on the couch.

Edward Cullen.

He could smell the rot the instant he looked at the boy he saw the brown rotted muscle the twisted curves of thin veins over sinewy arms. He had almost gagged.

"Yes, welcome." Edward said and Draco wished that he had stayed in New York. He'd fight the Knights any day.

I don't hate Twilight I'm just not the biggest mega fan. I thought about traditional vampires and thought of how to incorporate them in this story along with SMeyer's vamps and came up with the Diseased idea. It made perfect sense to do it this way. After all they have the basic mechanisms of vampires but because of the general differences and the fact that the 'Ancient ones' would be a big part of this story, I had to think of something.

Then I thought of the venom. I looked this particular vampire up and while they can go in the sunlight, they have skin as hard as marble, they are cold as ice…I came to the conclusion that they are in fact completely dead-and then there is the venom which "replaced all the their bodily fluids" which is from SMeyer herself, she actually stated it though I didn't copy it verbatim. Anyway, I thought if they can't use their internal organs and if they are so different from traditional vamps for example: Lestat can actually breathe and his heart beats, he sweats only it's mingled with blood.

I came up with the idea of them believing that they were vampires because there were none of the traditional vampires around. This being due to the Ancient Ones' ages and their deep hibernation underground there would be no one to explain to a coven like lets say the Cullen's that they aren't necessarily vampires but a strange venomous hybrid. Though it's not to say that SMeyer had a bad idea about her blood suckers I just took her idea and gave it my own spin.

Also, since all kinds of mythical creatures exist I decided to add something of my own in it. Since people with magical abilities genuinely deal with magic because it is essentially in their chemical makeup I decided that they would be able to see glamour or rather through magic. Fey are strong magical beings but that can only hide so much with Glamour.

Wizards and Witches can get a glimpse through the glamour like a safety mechanism so that they know what's what and it all ties into the Diseased. The Diseased are made with a bit of glamour like normal vamps however it's more or less diluted and intertwined with actual death which means that even the shiny ones are not forever-which will be explained in later chapters where Edward and Draco confront a small coven of three beings who know the gist of the entire story-they are that old!

Bella will play a very minor character in this story most likely the damsel in distress who is probably kidnapped by the Knights it's already in the works but it might not play out that way. It's up to you guys if she dies or not so get to reviewing just a little please. The Knights are nothing to do with Death Eaters it's more to do with hiding from a particular inheritance which will be explained soon. No Flames please and review!

Ciao!