Quick note: This story is based after the events in Book 12. I was inspired to write it after the discovery that, if things don't go Mr Tiny's way once, everything will start all over again until they do. This is what is happening in this fic: all of the characters who died during the series have had to have been replaced with other, similar counterfeits, but all those who didn't remain...Tiny was simply able to search their memories and erase all those from events over the last 12 books.
The main theme of this fic is destiny: something I read in the last book led me to believe that what Mr Tiny convinces people is destiny may be something more...or less.
I hope you enjoy it!
Disclaimer: All characters which have appeared in the 12-book Saga of Darren Shan are property of Darren Shan. However, all the 'counterfeit' characters are all my own invention (despite them being similar to the originals!)
So here we go...
Questioning Destiny
Chapter One
I inked my name across the back of my forearm with the feather-quill pen I'd requested the evening before. I wanted to be sure I was who – what – I was being led to believe.
David Soul. 17. Vampire.
The rivulets of dark ink seeped across my skin like blood running through tiny veins, as if confirming the facts. If I woke up, and the writing was gone, I would know everything that had happened to me over the last seven or so years was just a long - very long – dream. From the day I happened upon a freak show, was blooded a creature of the night by a vampire travelling with the performers, and had by best friend turn against me, sworn to hunt me down and kill me. Throughout the time I'd had to fake my own death, journey in the dark like a convict, witness pain, death and deception…
I should have said nightmare.
But then, there have been good things, too; the discovery of my vampire strengths and superior skills, the chance to lead a life of excitement – and, believe me, I'd had enough of that already – and the friendships I'd sealed.
I didn't want it to end.
If this is a dream, I told myself, settling down on my mattress and closing my eyes, it's one I won't forget.
First Interlude: Paradise
I, Darren Shan, know all about destiny.
Or, at least, I thought I did. A man named Mr Tiny had taught my kind about destiny for hundreds of years. He led me to believe I'd been clutched in the hands of destiny from the day I was blooded a vampire.
Yet it brought me to something Mr Tiny had not reckoned on – and still does not. It gave me time to gather together all my knowledge – Mr Crepsley's, too; knowledge that not even Des Tiny can ever possess, for although he has visited the Lake of Souls many times in the great stretch of his life…he has never been to Paradise.
He will never get to where Mr Crepsley and I now wait, because he has destroyed too many lives, caused too many disasters…and no doubt plans the downfall of just as many to come.
It was the happiest moment of my life – my un-life…my death-life – being reunited with Mr Crepsley, my mentor and best friend. He hadn't changed on the outside; ageing in Paradise isn't bothered with, but the inside was filled with much more.
With the things he had come to know here while we other vampires still walked the unhappy earth, combined with the things I'd learned during my last months amongst the living, we knew we finally held the answer to everything we'd been struggling against for so long.
It all boiled down to destiny. What we'd thought was destiny.
For years, Mr Tiny had controlled the vampires and the vampaneze by advising us to do things a certain way, that it was fate that things should happen. We'd been bending to his will blindly; never considering what would happen if we dared to take a different path. If we'd had the courage to step from Tiny's path, we would have learned that everything we do, we do by choice…there is no destiny.
