So, I've noticed a trend in the archives recently: a couple of fics exploring Erin's potential future in Paris and whether she would ever return to Vlad. It got me thinking about how abusive and twisted the Vlerin relationship became at the end of series 4 and before I knew it I was challenging myself to write this. If this fic seems incoherent or shifts suddenly from one place to another, that is deliberate. I'm trying to capture what it's like for someone as they slowly lose their sanity.
The warnings are in place for a reason, this fic is very dark and if you ship Vlerin this might not be the sort of thing you want to read. For those of us in the fandom who found the dynamics of Vlerin slightly worrying, I hope you enjoy it. If 'enjoy' is the right word...
xo
Twisted
They clogged up the drains sometimes, the discarded newspapers and magazines, it wasn't easy to get an up to date copy. Vampire publications were a speciality, their contents not suitable for consumption by the breather population which had control, albeit temporary, of this world. Most wealthy vampire families had a centennial subscription which ensured the safe and secure delivery of their preferred publications. Erin had no such thing. Living on the streets, moving from one damp, squalid cellar to another, it wasn't as if she could have afforded one even if the delivery vamps had been able to track her down.
She had to resort to forging in the gutter for her news. Picking sheets of paper out of filthy water tainted with sewage, drying them in the heat of whatever fire the ferals had managed to produce. Ferals. Strange really, how she still used that word to describe them even though she was now struggling to survive in their midst. It said a lot that word. Mainly about Vlad's pretensions, how he really viewed other vampires and those who had less social standing than him. Just because he had a fancy title and a couple of castles to his name, Vlad liked to think he was better than these savages, more civilised, more refined.
She hated him. Words couldn't describe the hatred she felt for her ex-boyfriend. It burned inside her like an all consuming fire, it turned everything else in her unlife to ashes, the heat and strength of her anger blinded her. It was all she could think of sometimes. He was all she could think of. She wanted him dead, she wanted him to burn and scream as he turned to dust, she wanted to plunge her hand into the pile of his ashes and clench them tightly in her fist as if her grip would still have the power to inflict pain. But that would never be enough. She fantasised about him all the time. Sometimes, of kissing him softly like she used to but mostly she fantasised about the various ways in which she could hurt him. Of the argentilium blades she would use to slash open his pale skin, of the poisons she would force him to drink, of how she would watch him bled and writhe in agony, those blue eyes pleading with her for forgiveness.
You see, he hadn't really begged her enough.
She preferred the magazines to the newspapers, the likes of Fang! and Goodbye had embraced the digital camera. In contrast the Vampire Times was still pretty strict about using so called 'proper' artists to produce their images. Pictures were important to Erin. She liked to look at Vlad. She liked to see how his appearance was changing in her absence, what he was wearing, how he was standing. She would scrutinise the images, searching for any clues as to what was taking place in his life, whether his eyes were red-rimmed with bloodlust, if the dark circles under his eyes had become more pronounced with each power struggle and assassination attempt that he survived. Vlad always looked so good, not just attractive-good but innocent-good. She used to tease him about having the face of an angel, told him vampires shouldn't be allowed to have such a sweet smile and big blue eyes full of hope and light. That had been when she had a pulse. Now, she wanted to claw at his perfection, rip shreds of porcelain skin off those exquisite bones. Vlad was proof that appearances were deceptive; beneath that seemingly flawless exterior he was filth, stinking with corruption, full of self-importance and utterly oblivious to the harm that he had inflicted on others.
She used to collect the articles, especially the ones with images; she kept them tucked away in her suitcase. Sometimes, when it was quiet during the day, she liked to pull the clippings out, pore over them, her fingers tracing the outline of Vlad's exposed throat. She would poke through her memories of him, good and bad; she would focus on reliving the good ones because they were the ones full of lies. She had to go over them again and again, remind herself of how his betrayal had ruined everything, how it was all soured by his actions. Every kiss, every caress had been a lie. It fed her anger, it kept her strong.
Her little collection had suffered when Malik found it. He and the ferals had taken it in turns to throw fireballs at her suitcase. Held back by some of the stronger street-fangs, Erin had watched as Vlad's face crinkled up and withered away in the dancing flames.
She wondered how much Malik knew of her thoughts or of her true feelings. Did he know that when she was in his coffin, her body beneath his, their mouths pressed together, that it was Vlad she was thinking of? That it was Vlad's pale, elegant fingers moving across her skin? That she closed her eyes and saw Vlad's face in her mind, his eyes shut, black eyelashes trailing against his skin, his beautifully full mouth parting in pleasure? Or, that she ignored his grunts and recalled instead how Vlad used to cry out her name? It helped to lose herself in better memories of the act. She needed to be lost more than ever when Malik shared her with some of the other ferals.
There were times though, when even Malik, as self-centred and egotistical as the older vampire was, couldn't ignore her obsession with his half-brother. The newspaper clippings had been one such instance. That boy in Berlin had been another. The discarded heir to the Dracula throne had found her, sitting in a pool of blood, rocking back and forth, the dead boy's head in her lap, her hands wandering over the deceased's black hair. He had looked so like Vlad, she had tried to stop, she honestly had but his blood had just been so delicious, she couldn't stop herself from guzzling more and more even as she told herself she had to hold back for the bite to work. Yes, that's what she needed. A little half-fang pet of her own to abuse and use, to practise for when she finally got hold of Vlad.
Malik had lost patience by then, he had grown weary of her schemes and her plotting, of her increasingly erratic behaviour. He wanted revenge for his mother but he wasn't prepared to risk a dusting for it.
He caught her by the throat, lifted her into the air as if she were no more than rag doll, the dead boy had rolled off her lap and landed with a sickening thud on the dirt-covered floor. Then, Malik forced Erin to look at her victim, really look at him, he had shouted and raged at her, threatened to abandon her, leave her on her own again. She had seen the truth then, as she stared into those blank unseeing eyes, she realised he wasn't Vlad. His nose was too big, his cheekbones not quite sharp enough, his hair more of a dark brown than Vlad's sooty black.
It was a pity that the Vampire Times hadn't bothered to show their victims at the Eiffel Tower. But why would they? A couple of breathers were hardly significant but, you see, if they had bothered then maybe Vlad would have realised something. Erin's victims were not random. At least, she tried not to make them random. A message had to be sent to the Chosen One and it seemed it was only by killing that she could reach him through the newspapers. Erin preferred a particular type of victim; teenage boys, slim with dark hair and blue eyes, she liked to pretend that they were Vlad, that vicious need in her to make him pay was eased only slightly by their whimpers as she drove her fangs through resisting flesh. She enjoyed every second of their screams, the way their hands scrabbled frantically at her back as if they could ever have the strength to push her away. She wanted to make Vlad scream and sob with pain like these boys did. She wanted him to beg...
Sometimes, the hunger drove her to the brink of madness, the pain gnawing at her insides making her almost rabid and those were the times when she wasn't picky. Animal or human, dead or living, she didn't care where she got her fix from, she only knew that she needed blood. Besides, it wasn't as if she could be held responsible for her actions. It was all Vlad's doing, all his fault, he had made her into this monster, he had destroyed her. The blood that soaked into her hair and clothes was really on his hands not hers.
They didn't tell the full story, those newspapers, at least she hoped not because they were full of Vlad's glory. Even the more gossipy ones had downplayed their previous cynicism towards Vlad's peace plans and his wardrobe choices. He was winning, he was gaining support from the vampire world, the Guild, the breathers and it made her sob with frustration to read of it. How dare he succeed? How dare he find peace or happiness in anything after what he had done to her? The desire to destroy him, to completely annihilate him and everything he claimed to believe in, drove her to commit more and more acts of murder and bloodshed. The fire that sustained her grew ever more demanding, it consumed more and more of her until sometimes she felt like she was losing her mind.
It took months for Vlad to be linked to another woman but when it finally happened, the pain and rage at this further betrayal had overwhelmed Erin. It didn't matter that she had been the first to move on, that she had been vindictive in seeking pleasure from Vlad's half brother under his own roof, that she had rubbed her affair with Malik in Vlad's face at every opportunity, that wasn't the point. She was allowed to move on, allowed to forge a new beginning for herself but Vlad wasn't. He had no right, not after what he had done to their relationship, after he had violated her trust, her wishes, her body.
According to Fang!, this new love interest was Lady Sarah Holmwood. She was blonde, dainty, beautiful, an esteemed member of the vampire aristocracy, in other words the perfect vampiress for Count Dracula's precious little boy. Erin had torn up the picture of her replacement, ripping it into tiny pieces of confetti, stained rust-red with that night's dinner. Then, for the next few nights, her victims had been blonde women, she had toyed with them, played with them the way she wanted to play with that evil bitch who had taken her rightful place in Vlad's heart. She enjoyed their cries for help, their pleas for mercy, as she tortured them she warned them against falling for the Grand High Vampire, whispered into their bleeding ears of what he had done to her.
The ferals was beginning to fear her. As Vlad's First Bite, she had raw power beyond that of any ordinary half-fang but without training she couldn't use it. All this energy was just laying dormant inside her, no dormant was not quite the word she should have used. The darkness swirled around inside her, desperate for release but she didn't know how to unleash it. Malik hadn't bothered to teach her more than the basics. She had a feeling that he didn't like her power, he didn't like to be reminded of his inadequacies especially when it came to his younger brother.
This was another way in which Vlad was winning the war between them. His rehab programmes were luring ferals away from the streets, the promise of a steady supply of blood and a new start giving many the incentive to pull the pieces of their shattered lives back together again. So many vampires were now wearing the black ribbon, a symbol of their commitment to abstaining from human blood. When she saw the photograph of the silken material against Vlad's neck in Goodbye, Erin had wondered just how true it was. Vlad had been slipping towards addiction ever since he had tasted her slayer blood, had he really managed to overcome his demons? If so, that was another win for him, another failure for her.
What really drove away the ferals was her reaction to the papers on that slayer. It was dangerous to be around Erin and Malik, the Guild seemed determined to bring them down, slayers followed and tracked them to nearly every city in Europe. One had made the mistake of entering their den without back up, they had drained him within minutes and then took to rifling through his pockets for valuables. Months later, Erin could still feel the luxurious thickness of the parchment on her fingertips, the red wax seal which bore the insignia of the Grand High Vampire and there it was, scrawled in dark red blood, Vladimir Dracula. He had signed her death warrant, Vlad had signed her death warrant, the boy who was supposed to always love her had signed her death warrant. She couldn't remember much after that, it was as if she slipped off the edge, the voices in her head had screamed for vengeance, the rage had overpowered her and she let the darkness out in the only way she knew how. When she finally regained some form of consciousness, she was surrounded by chunks of flesh and half eaten bones, glutinous blood dripping from her hair, face and hands. The ferals had been cowering against the walls, their eyes wide with horror at what she had done in her madness. Malik, sitting on a makeshift throne, had given her a cool, appraising look.
She still loved Vlad. Those emotions were still deep in her heart, her life still revolved around him, she could still see nothing but him in her future but what you had to understand was that it was all twisted now. Her love was hate, her passion verging on obsession, she wanted to watch him falter and fail, she wanted to inflict pain on him, terrible, terrible pain that he would never recover from. He haunted her every waking hour at night and her nightmares during the day and it was becoming increasingly difficult to differentiate between the two. When she crawled through the filth of the sewer just to snatch a rat for its bitter tasting blood, she thought of him and revelled in the anguish he would feel if he saw her now. When a slayer got as far as pressing a wooden tip to her chest, she remembered how Vlad had once done the same but had been too pathetic, too sentimental to carry his threat through to completion. She was burning now, burning too fast, too bright, too powerful to hold all this heartbreak and anger inside. She knew that, she knew she wasn't going to last for much longer. Some half-fangs flourished and thrived for centuries, she had at best a few years. If Vlad knew this, if he saw the depravity of her existence, the cruelty she was capable of, the loathing she felt for him in her damaged heart... it would destroy him. And that's what kept her going.