The first time Erin saw the Chosen One, the most powerful vampire ever, the thing that had to be killed, it was dark and she was never more glad that 'half-fangs' (especially female ones) were beneath the notice of born vampires. Later, she would review the conversation and try to work out just when Vladimir Dracula had come upon her and his sister, but she never figured it out. All she knew was that she had been so glad the car had started working again that she had dropped her guard enough to shriek when she saw the vampire in her headlights. Her masquerade would probably have been discovered if Ingrid Dracula hadn't been quite so sick or quite so annoyed at the figure that had appeared.

"Talking of brothers, that's mine." Erin noted that the vampiress hadn't even paused before speaking. Was it that vampires had faster mental processing, or perhaps some sixth sense for others of their kind? As Ingrid got out of the car, Erin suppressed a gulp. Neither looked particularly happy to see the other; the rumours that they had had a falling out seemed to be more plausible. Had she, rather than lining up to infiltrate the Draculas, put herself in the middle of a fight between to particularly powerful vampires?

But no, they didn't seem angry. She squinted at Vladimir while his sister walked towards him. Intellectually, she had known that he was Ingrid's younger brother but she hadn't expected him to look like a teenager. And yet, as he and his sister circled each other, arms swinging slightly, casual for vampires, Erin couldn't help but notice that he was circling like a predator. Was he going to bite his sister who, given her current weakness, was no doubt temping prey for a born hunter? The slayer was full that night of questions about vampires that had never occurred to her before, but seemed to be becoming more pressing by the second. How old was the Chosen One, not physically – which was misleading with vampires – but in years? What was going on between the siblings? And, most pressing for a human pretending to be a vampire, did vampires feed from their own?

"You got old." Ingrid's words made no sense to Erin. Vladimir was young, by vampire standards and – she was beginning to suspect – by human ones too. Still, they were not words given not to a younger brother but to an old enemy, years after the fighting had finished.

"You got sick." The tone of Vladimir's instant reply was dry, perfect for repartee. What worried Erin more was how many human girls had he lured off into the dark with his warm, low voice. Monsters should sound horrible, or at least wickedly seductive. They shouldn't sound like someone you'd enjoy spending a rainy afternoon with, playing board games and drinking hot chocolate.

"I can look after myself." The words were defensive but probably true if Ingrid had been pitted against any unsuspecting human. Against several slayers, or another vampire, she was in trouble. Erin had no doubt she had no chance against her brother.

"Oh, yeah? So why'd you leave Stokely?" The powerful vampire's words weren't pointed or angry; they were flat, the lack of expression of someone who knew how the conversation would go and was just doing the motions.

"I got bored." The tone was prim, rather jarring coming from the mouth of a vampire dressed in a style that could only be called goth, as all vampires did.

"You got burned." This time the words did have a slight edge, one Erin almost missed because, despite the two vampires outside the car who would invent new horrors to do to her if they realised she was a slayer, she was slightly enthralled by the Chosen One's lyrical welsh accent. The pause stretched for a few seconds, just long enough for Erin to snap out of it and notice Ingrid's slight hesitation, the first since the stat of the– not conversation, nor a duel with words, but a tag team.

"So that's what this is," she finally answered. "You're here to gloat." For a second, something approaching… hurt… appeared on the monster's face. Erin pushed that though out of her mind, as much because she didn't want to examine that thought to closely as because Vladimir had barely waited for his sister to finish her sentence before responding:

"I'm here to take you home." Emphatic was the best way to describe his tone, each word almost a sentence on its own, if only the pauses between words had been longer. Looking at the two vampires through her windshield, Erin understood at last why vampires tended to wear black when the colour was too dark even for the night. It wasn't that they didn't want to be seen; no, their silhouettes in the dark were designed to terrify their prey. After all, if they wanted to sneak up on their prey, their speed and agility would do the job better than any camouflage. Hot on the heels of that revelation was the icy realisation that humans really were helpless against the vampires, prey in every possible way.

Ingrid laughed, a half chuckle filled with genuine amusement. For the tiniest of seconds, the monster held no anger, no smugness, no unholy glee, just hilarity at a younger brother's strange theory.

"I think it's a bit late to be playing happy families, don't you?" she asked. Erin watched them still, with an intensity born from the confirmation that all was not well between the siblings and the news that she might be the first slayer to learn what a proper vampire throwdown actually looked like.

"We can protect you from the slayers." Wait, we? …Ah, Count Dracula. It was odd, while watching his children, and even in the hours before when she was trying to persuade Ingrid they were on the same side, she had forgotten that their father was the single most notorious vampire in human history (though a small part of her brain whispered that it was hard to report how dangerous a vampire was if you were dead, so it must be hard to judge). Vladimir and Ingrid had been just the Chosen one and his sister, not the Draculas.

"I can handle them." The words could only be called, annoyingly, bitting. Ingrid, no matter how obvious it was that she couldn't back up her words, kept her face straight refusing to back down from her brother, the prophesised leader of the vampires. And Erin admired her (no, it) just a little for doing so.

Vladimir's eyebrows went up, whether deliberately calling Ingrid's bluff or in genuine disbelief, Erin couldn't tell. What happened next was sudden and so completely not what a human would do that it caught her by surprise.

Ingrid's hiss, barring her fangs and letting her eyes glow red terrified Erin more than she would ever admit. She was no longer worried about the vampires realising she was human; she was far more likely to be killed by accident when they started fighting. And they would fight; as Ingrid had shown, no vampire would back down, no matter the circumstances.

"And I'm not afraid to use them." Her tone was at odds with Erin's fear of a fight; Ingrid's tone was twistedly informative, an older sister telling her younger brother that she would try to kill him if he continued. Her eyes flicked down, clearly taking in her brother, whom she had apparently not seen for some time and saying only: "On anyone." Her words were harder than stone, no fault lines of remorse or reluctance anywhere.

Vladimir's face was equally hard, and his silence displayed the coldness his voice and words had hidden until then. At that moment, the family resemblance went deeper than superficial looks; their faces had the same stoic determination as Vladimir took at step towards his sister and opened his mouth to speak:

"You'll lose." The vampire's voice was… unnatural. Gone was the warmth, the… normalcy. The supernatural, almost metallic overtones to the certain statement would have sent Erin running, if any of her muscles would have obeyed her. Later, she would thank her response, or lack of it, to those words because the usual dilemma when faced with vampires would have gotten her killed. If she had fought, she would have stood no chance. If she had run, the two hunters outside the vehicle would have had her in seconds. Things couldn't have been worse.

They got worse. Not even pausing after meeting his sister's subtle challenge for dominance, Vladimir Dracula also let his vampiric traits out, only they were the same as his sister's. Her small double teeth were nothing compared to his large fangs, and her eyes' red tint was pitiful when one looked at the black of the Chosen One's eyes. Not doubt there was some flowery and poetical reason for that, 'his eyes are as black as the night he owns' perhaps though Erin was leaning more towards 'his eyes are as black as his soul'.

Her terrified musings were stoped flat, however, by the flames that burst into… well, life was the wrong word… around the two vampires, with Vladimir in the exact centre. The light was almost blinding after the darkness, but through the flames she could make out the images of the two vampires, black leather glistening in the firelight.

As Ingrid looked around at the circle, Erin shifted in her seat, preparing to take her chances and run the moment the two vampires began to tear into each other. But, seconds later, Vladimir's face slid back to its normal, handsome, grown-up-boy-next-door features and Ingrid's face lost some of its toughness, settling into tiredness as she spoke:

"Now you're just showing off." The defeat in her tone was audible to Erin, a few meters away in the car, so no doubt Vladimir had heard it too. He looked up to the heavens – for help? Was it a prayer? – and looked back at his sister, a sigh tearing itself from his body (how was that possible if the vampires didn't breath?) as the flames surrounding him and his sister extinguished.

"Come home, Ingrid." For the first time, emotion seemed to slip past the stoic façade, his words sounding far more human than a monster's should and more than was good for Erin's peace of mind. "We missed you." The conviction, the emotion, was so very at odds with Vladimir's vampire dress, with its black leathers clinging to his body so tightly a human wouldn't have been able to breath and his cape providing him with a more menacing silhouette, that Erin gave up trying to understand it. The family dynamic between the two Dracula siblings was clearly too much for a mere mortal to comprehend.

"We?" Sharp and to the point. Ingrid's head snapped around to look straight at her brother, disbelief written lightly on her stoic face.

"Deep down, he loves you." Vladimir countered his sister's disbelief with ringing sincerity, but despite that even Erin didn't believe that Count Dracula really loved his daughter, and she hadn't even seen them together.

"No, he doesn't," Ingrid countered, tone flat, with just a hint of resignation. An old argument? "Never has never will." Definitely an old argument.

"Give him another chance!" Somehow, at Vladimir's words, Erin began to feel like a voyeur, and something uncomfortably like a twinge of guilt welled up. She squashed it ruthlessly, but it was somehow much harder than it should have been. Getyourselftogether, she thought, They'dkillyouwithoutasecond'sthought."He'll prove you wrong."

The silence lasted a few seconds, as Ingrid's inner struggle leaked ever so slightly past her mask of indifference. Then she pulled herself together and spoke, her voice flatter than ever: "Bye, Vlad."

Vladimir looked away from Ingrid, in the opposite direction to the car in which Erin was sitting. The slayer was glad for that because she rather suspected the two vampires had forgotten about her and she decided she'd really rather they weren't reminded.

The Chosen One looked back at his sister in the exact same moment as she looked towards him. Something seemed to pass between them, unspoken, undecipherable to an outside observer like Erin. Then Ingrid spoke again, meanings hidden with in means: "Stay out of trouble. I guess that's what you're best at." She turned at began to trudge back to the car (maybe not so forgotten as she had hoped), ignoring her brothers slight shake of the head, denying her words.

"Slayers are coming." Vladimir's words were a surprise as he stirred himself out of whatever quite trance he had been in.

"You're paranoid. Relax. We lost them." Ingrid's words didn't seem to reassure her brother one bit, for he rushed over to her even as he said:

"They put a tracking device on you." Howdidheknownthat? Erin wondered as a cold chill went down her spine. Forthatmatter,howdidheknowwheretofindus? Sure enough, he pulled something small and metallic from his sister.

"How did that get there?" she asked, very distinctly not panicking. Ingrid might not even realise it herself, Erin deduced, but (subconsciously, at least) she knew that the other slayers stood no chance now her brother was there to back her up.

"They're looking for me. They must have known I'd try to find you." Howdoesheknow?Howcouldhepossiblyknow?

"I'm the bait? Oh, don't I feel special." Ingrid's sarcasm was so potent it could peel paint at twenty paces. Then her illness chose to act up again and the vampires was clutching at the car's bonnet for support. Then her brother was leaning in beside her, reassuring her:

"You are special. You're my sister." And, once again, they shared a look that excluded a slayer desperate for any information that might be of use from the communication. Finally, Erin's body unfroze and she got out, rushing towards the Draculas (though she was careful not to go too fast least they think her a threat) and she said:

"Let me help."

"I got her," the Chosen One replied. Did he not trust her with his sister, or was his support meant to be more symbolic? "Open the door." She hastened to obey, conscious of the fact that the Chosen One was the most powerful of vampires and he may or may not know that she wasn't responsible for his sister's illness.

After putting the vampires in the car, he looked over at her, his face grave but his voice still that unfair, deceptively kind intonation:

"Take her to Garside Grange School. I'll meet you there."

"You're not coming with us?" It was a stupid question. Obviously he wasn't coming, but she couldn't just blurt out all the many questions she wanted to ask him so she went with stupid. Stupid wasn't threatening.

"I'm going to throw them off the scent." His face was impassive but, during the long drive to the school, Erin would analyse his voice and body language, and realise that there had been an undercurrent of anger and she worried for the other slayers, but there was nothing she could do.

When they met up later, he said nothing of the other slayers and she didn't press him, especially after the showdown with the Count. Given his anger and the way he had stared down his father, even having the cojones to tell his father to bite him, in perfect seriousness, Erin was pretty sure that night, as she went to sleep, that the drained bodies of the other slayers were lying in a field somewhere.

Now, if only she could get the concept of the Chosen One having maths homework out of her head, she should have no trouble trying to kill him.