I didn't mean for this sequel to take so long to start, but I wanted to finish Favour first and that got wayyyy longer than I intended it to.

This chapter is a little all over the place, because it keeps kind of varying between past, present and some odd mix of the two. Should clear up next chapter.

So, AGU is set some fifteen years after the end of Vl-Adam-Ir, and there will be some stuff on Adam's life in between but it really isn't that exciting, or hugely important to where the story is going? And I'm doing it again, rambling in the authors notes. On with the story!

-AGU-

"Are you sure about this Adam?" Bertrand had asked him three times this week. "Not in the slightest, but I'm running out of time to put it off. The High Council are going to find us sooner or later, and Erika is turning sixteen in a month and a half, she's going to accidentally flame a customer or something soon." Adam had answered the same more or less every time. "I'm going to miss this place. Your dear great-great... and so on niece is a wonderful woman." Bertrand nodded - when Adam had first broached the subject of mind wiping and disappearing from the Dracula castle, and the vampire world itself really, he had expected more resistance from Bertrand.

Instead, he had made a plan in a matter of days, and once Adam had stood in front of the blood mirror it had been little time at all before they left. He had been quite surprised to find Bertrand had human family he knew of - the vampire was turned some four hundred years ago. More surprising was that the woman knew who Bertrand was, and that he was a vampire. She was a sweet, slightly strange woman who ran a pub, and had doted on little Erika from the day she met them. Adam had taken about six months to stop laughing at Bertrand doing such a normal job, especially when he had many patrons male and female flirting with him all the time. The vampire was effortlessly polite with all of them, simply serving them drinks and mocking Adam for being the underling collecting glasses and cleaning them.

Fifteen years of such a normal life, the highlight of it being Jessie - Bertrands long lost relative - telling Adam his not being able to go outside in daylight was no excuse for Erika not to go to school. Jessie's son Wilson was only a year older than Erika, so after one terrifying trip on a very rainy day to register her at the same school, she had gone with the humans every day, had made him somewhat complacent. However, in spite of him staying firmly in the shadows, giving up his human side and gaining some extensive powers, he knew time was no longer on their side. Bertrands main concern had been being able to keep training Adam, which they had done, and Adams concern was his daughter, who was an intelligent, witty girl and was now scarily close to her own transformation.

He had been honest about her half vampire side from the age of five, not wanting her two halves at war the way his had been. Erika had taken it well, and hadn't even asked about why Adam was her only parent (Bertrand still hated being Uncle B, but a child her age couldn't pronounce his name and it had stuck over time) until she was twelve. That had been an intense, emotional and very very long conversation, honestly adding that he had had something of a relationship with his half sister. Erika didn't take that well, but after he explained it had started before he knew she was his sister, and that one of the reasons he had left was so she could freely find someone other than him, she had come around. So long as they never brought it up again, that was. The biggest surprise to Adam had been that Bertrand was surprisingly good with Erika - he read to her, helped her with her homework and irritated Adam by encouraging her 'goth side' as she hit her teen years.

The... he wasn't sure they could call it a relationship, he had with Bertrand wasn't a surprise in all honesty. They spent almost all their time together, and Adam couldn't deny the vampire was attractive. It had started fairly accidentally - as he had been told, the bad dreams didn't totally vanish until he was eighteen, and one of the early mornings he had woken while Erika was already at school, Bertrand had asked what was wrong and Adam had sought comfort the only way he knew how. Bertrand had been hesitant, unsure but Adam pointed out he was far from pure and innocent, and they had a casual way of cohabiting. Sex was just part of the routine, never expressly talked about, and they weren't couple-like the rest of the time, just colleagues and room mates.

Erika was at school, knowing it was her last week there before they had to go to Lancashire - apparently his father Count Dracula now owned a school according to the Vampire High Council records. So when Adam felt the need to burn off his worries about facing his family again, Bertrand didn't argue as they fell into bed. He had joked it was a little backwards that the most powerful vampire in the world used sex as a way to let go rather than dominate, but Adam couldn't help but enjoy being held down by the muscular vampire. "Plus, you did meet Ingrid right. Who do you think wore the trousers there?" Bertrand had conceded his point, pushing Adam down on the bed and pressing fangs to his still-unmarked shoulder.

He knew it was telling, the 'claim' on his shoulder from Ingrid had never faded, but Adam didn't dwell on it. Especially when facing up to the idea of going back there, examining his feelings was not a way to keep a clear head. "Come on, we have to open up in half an hour and we still haven't started packing up." Grumbling as he climbed out of bed and redressed, Adam stuck his tongue out petulantly and levitating his things into a neat pile on the decidedly messy bed. "Packing will take five minutes, you're just worried Jessie will catch us again." "I am almost four centuries your senior." "So? My father was three hundred and fifty years older than Ingrid's mother, almost six hundred years older than my mother. Age counts for nothing once it's legal." Again, a conversation they had had before. "Plus, I'm now thirty. Or something. Though I'm still only about nineteen to the patrons of this fine establishment."

Heading down to make sure everything was cleaned and ready for opening hours, Adam smiled at Jessie. "I shall be sad to see the three of you go. And Wilson is equally sad he never had the chance to ask Erika out." Chuckling, Adam knew that was true. "Well, that's why we told her no dating before she's sixteen. I was only fourteen when her mother got pregnant, and I wouldn't change having her for the world but it is no way to grow up. Once she's transformed, she can do as she pleases really. So who knows, maybe she will decide she likes geeks who speak Klingon and dress up as Harry Potter characters and come back for him." "Well, she's always welcome to visit. All three of you are. I know a group of housewives who will be very sad to see Bertrand go." "Someone mention me?" "We were just discussing your fan club. The ones who always ask for the drinks out of the fridge so you have to bend over for them." Unable to stop himself snorting into his cup of coffee (he had never lost the taste for it), Adam checked with Jessie that he looked presentable.

"Such handsome boys and yet no reflections, there's an injustice somewhere." Adam had been reliably informed he looked exactly the same as he did ten years ago, scruffy black hair and erring on the side of too skinny no matter how much exercise he and Bertrand did, or how many pigs and sheep he drank. "You two going to be alright? Jack is out back in the kitchen, but I have a lunch date so it's just the two of you here out front." "Yeah, just don't forget to pick up Erika and we are good." It probably helped that half the customers wanted to 'get to know' either Adam or Bertrand, depending on their taste, but they never seemed to have trouble with impatient people. "Later boys! Don't get snacking on the customers!" Shaking his head as the slightly mad woman left, Adam checked the glasses while Bertrand made sure the drinks stocks were up. "The Chosen One and his tutor, working in a tavern full of breathers without biting a single one." "Hey, you couldn't make this stuff up. And not for much longer since you broke into the VHC and found my dads address. The real trick is not getting staked on sight."

"Well, their memory wipes should still be intact so who knows." They dropped the vampiric conversation as it was time to open up, the TV playing endless sports games over a projector beamed onto a wall. Adam still hated most sports, though he occasionally watched the rugby matches with a mild sense of nostalgia. "Yer a toothpick lad. No way you ever played this." "It was when I was at school, I'm speedier and stronger than I look." The large man, who turned up every day like clockwork and drank steadily but never seemed to actually become intoxicated, gave a gruff laugh as he paid for his drink and went back to watching the rugby match. Bertrand was once again being chatted up by a group of women, leaving Adam to clear up where someone had spilled their lunch and fight laughter as the ladies leaned over the bar to eye Bertrand's backside as he bent over. Shaking his head as he greeted the regulars, Adam clockwatched until Erika came home, waving to the people she had grown up around as she passed through to head up to their living space at the top.

"Gotta love UV filtered glass, otherwise we would have to work in full sunproof leather and people would think this was a special kind of place." Adam laughed to himself as he checked in on Erika sleeping, then dropped onto his own bed. "You say that every month or so, as though I've forgotten it since the last time you cracked that inane joke." "Grumpy biter." Bertrand actually did growl then, sending a mild thrill through Adam but he knew he had to get up and go out training. They sparred, traded fireballs in an empty field and practiced flying manoeuvres until a couple of hours to dawn, staying awake just long enough to see Erika off to school and grabbing the last few hours of sleep before work would start again. "I think I saw another one tonight." "Hmm?" "A vampire. These last three days need to hurry before they find us here and we put Jessie and Wilson in danger." Bertrand nodded, most of their things packed up - though that wasn't really much, they had known better than to put down roots and neither of them were particularly materialistic.

Each with their backpack on, Jessie and Wilson gave them all hugs (which Bertrand still looked confused by) goodbye, and Jessie gushed that they could always come back if they ever needed to. "We know, but Erika needs to make a hot date with a mirror. And I need to show the Council I'm still alive. Undead. Whatever. You guys have been brilliant, I can't thank you enough for giving me somewhere safe to raise my daughter." "Oh do shut up dad, before I put garlic in your shampoo again." Luckily he had noticed before he used it really, that could have been dangerous. "Love you too daughter dear. Right then, we had better go." There was another round of hugs from Jessie, and then they really had to leave. Grabbing hold of Erika, having been able to tandem transform with her since she was a baby, Adam and Bertrand shifted into bat forms and flew away from their home away from home.

Bertrand knew the way better, so Adam watched where he went and flapped after him. There was something infinitely relaxing about being in this form, moonlight and keeping his wings moving the only important thing to the bat. They flew for a couple of hours, landing outside what was indeed a school. "Your father owns a real, actual school. I thought he was some badass vampire?" "Language Erika. I have no idea why he's here. Or what's going to happen. Stay close to either me or Bertrand ok?" "Fine. Spoilsport." As the building was a school, not an official dwelling, they didn't need inviting in. And since it was about three in the morning, that was probably a good thing. "They are here. The Count. Ingrid. Erin. And... I can feel a human, and two more I can't make out. Not sure what they are." "Impressive senses. However, we should assume they can also sense us. Stay alert." Bracing himself for facing the people he essentially ran out on fifteen years ago, Adam stepped forwards and pushed the door open.

-AGU-

I haven't suddenly turned this into an Adam/Bertrand fic, I honestly don't know where I plan on ending this ship wise so be prepared for anything. And welcome back to the Adam!Vlad!