Chapter Six – Bittersweet

Maja-Keht strutted away with Vlad at her heels and Jonno raised his hands, the makeshift stake he'd created dropping to the floor with a wooden thunk. Two vampires immediately pinned his arms behind his back and he half expected them to go straight for his throat but apparently they held high respect for the mystic as they took the pair straight down to cells without taking a single bite.

They were placed back in their respective cells albeit with new locks and left to do nothing.

Then Robin started talking, much to Jonno's distress. "What do you think she's sending Vlad to get then?" Jonno considered opening his mouth to talk but was saved the decision. "I think it's probably some magic amulet, like the ones they have in Buffy y'know?" Jonno did not know; his father had never allowed him to watch the show and had said that it was stupid and if he wanted to watch a show about slayers and vampires then he should just talk to Eric about it. "I bet it gives her super powers and she'll try and take over the world and we'll have to stop her."

Robin had a dreamy, faraway look in his eyes. "We'd be such an awesome team! Vlad would be the brawn, you'd be the tactical one and I'd be the brains of the operation." Jonno didn't respond as Robin would likely ignore everything he said as he would call the idea dumb and stupid. The slayer scowled and busied himself with rattling the chains on his cell. "We could be like the three musketeers but modern and we could stop evil people and stuff!"

Jonno had to cut his fantasy short there with a sharp interruption. "We aren't heroes. However close Vlad and I are as friends we have our separate…" He struggled to find the right word. "-races and that means there will always be a bridge between us."

Robin in response to Jonno's slightly rude rebuff was to smile. "Who better to bridge the gap than me?"

Jonno gave a low growl. "It doesn't work like that." He thought about Ingrid's malicious smirk. "It's pretty much impossible to trust any of the vampires other than Vlad and sometimes I'm not even sure I can trust him." Vlad had been acting oddly after the ritual and Jonno wasn't sure if he could trust Vlad's heart in this instance.

Robin still did not deflate. "Come on…"

"Robin!" Jonno barked. "We're in a vampire dungeon. Do you honestly think we are on good terms?" Robin went silent and Jonno felt a rant coming. "May I remind you that Vlad was captured with us? And the reason we were even captured in the first place!" Jonno took a deep breath, realising he was just getting started. "If he can't even control his own race how can we ever have peace?"

"Or how about the fact that he was happy to wipe us all of our memory when it suited him?"

"He was just trying to protect us-" Robin began to say.

"And by doing that he got my father killed!" They both froze; the extent of what had been said chilling both of them.

"He killed your father?" Robin asked, slowly and cautiously, sober for once.

"No- not deliberately," and suddenly Jonno was defending the person he'd just been cursing. "But my father died because of his mindwipe."

"Oh."

The two occupants of the dungeons went silent and Jonno wondered if he'd finally made Robin shut up.

It was quite a while before Robin spoke again. "Vlad's changed." It was murmured, uncomfortably unlike the majority of his speech and Jonno adjusted his position to look at the Branaugh properly. "He's darker."

Jonno gave a half-grimace. "It's kind of a side effect of becoming a creature of the night."

"I know," Robin replied, tracing patterns on the stone floor with his dirty fingers. "I just thought he'd be more…" At Jonno's look he shrugged. "I don't know, just more… Vlad."

"That's who he is now." Jonno sometimes found he missed the Vlad who he'd been able to read like an open book in Stokley but he also liked and respected who Vlad had become aside from the loose morals he displayed when things got tough. "You don't have to like it." He scratched at the wall. "You just have to accept it." Jonno glanced over at Robin and saw him frowning; he didn't seem to approve of that idea. "I did." He murmured quietly, he hadn't liked the Vlad he met in Garside Grange but it had been necessary to accept him and the vampire had come through. Their friendship may have been wobbly and without trust but it gave them both an escape from a life neither of them ever wanted.

Robin went silent again and Jonno considered where Vlad might be and what he could be retrieving.

It was dark, even to Vlad's vampire eyes. Around him there were objects he couldn't identify and when he moved something clattered to the floor. He froze for a moment. Once he was sure that no one was coming he began to edge outwards slowly, searching for a wall.

Eventually his palm found a solid wall and he pressed his hand against it, running his palms across the groves in the brick. Then he tried to find a door. It took longer than he'd hoped and as he slid around the room he knocked over numerous objects making quite a clatter. And when he finally reached the door it was quite a palaver trying to shift the big bulking objects from in front of the door. He ran his palms along the cool metal searching for an indent or a handle but found none.

So he just punched straight through the panel instead. The room suddenly was illuminated by the small amount of light worming through the cracks between and around his knuckles. He gave the room behind him a quick once over, identifying it as some sort of store cupboard.

He tore the door open and froze. At least a dozen guns were being pointed at him by a vast number of very large men.

He pursed his lips.

"Bugger."