Well, the number thirteen is lucky for some...

PrimeMegalodon: Sort of, I just imagined Ingrid would feel more competitive with a sister than brother, what with her Queen Bee complex, and I wanted her and her little brother to be close. Not the way I want Vlad and Ingrid to be, but you get the idea.

-YD-

"Well? What did you find out?"

Ingrid could give the most patient vampire whiplash, Vlad decided. A minute ago she'd been on top of him, biting kisses sucking the air from his still-working lungs. Next he knew, she'd spotted the stack of VHC papers on the side, began questioning him on them practically mid-kiss.

"I haven't finished yet. There's almost forty sheets of parchment full of info, and it's double sided. I only got it a day ago."

She rolled her eyes, but resumed kissing him. Ingrid was the embodiment of mixed signals, and Vlad could only really hang on for the ride and hope to learn the ropes. Ingrid no longer bit him in irritation, so he seemed to be on the right lines. She still bit him when her teeth hurt, but Vlad had offered that service... probably. When she grew bored of that, Ingrid moved off of him and sat at the end of his bed, helping herself to his bag of sweets and occasionally frowning at the way her taste buds kept changing their mind.

"I've discounted a few pages entirely, based on what I've already read about the clans, but remember with immortality comes multiple generations. One clan living somewhere could mean twenty or thirty vampires over five or even ten generations. There's three sheets alone on the Necros clan, but they moved out of the UK ten years before you were conceived. So luckily, I was able to move on from them."

"Are you on the list?"

"I wasn't born before you, so that would be quite a trick."

"I meant.. Dracula, right? The ultimate cliche in your surname at school."

Vlad nodded.

"Yeah. When the headmistress turned up here to try and explain to my dad, she was trying to ask for his surname and he got annoyed at being called 'Mr', said Count as his title and it... stuck. If it were Dracula on the register, Mr Van Helsing would already have slain me. Not that he hasn't tried."

"What is the deal with the wood dork and his overly attentive spawn?"

"Well, he's a slayer. A terrible one, but he carries a stake and hides bulbs of garlic in the classroom. My first day at school, which was also his, he set up a trap that accidentally snared the headmistress. I wish he'd got the sack but he passed it off as trying out a new anti-theft thing cus of the tools in his classroom, and school was letting out so she just put it down to him being eccentric."

"And Jonno?"

"Thinks that his dad is bonkers, that vampires don't exist and that my dad is just your average Romanian immigrant that lives in a castle and has a son named Vlad."

"Don't forget the cape."

"Yeah, but Jonno has never seen the cape. Or the coffin dad sleeps in. Or the spares in the crypt."

Swallowing her sweets down, Ingrid reached out and tapped the wood of his bedframe.

"If he staked you now, it wouldn't kill you right?"

"I wouldn't explode into dust, no. But if he rammed a wooden point through my heart, I would be pretty dead."

"Does it have to be the heart?"

"Yep. Vampires who actively hunt slayers are covered in scars from missed stakings. The hardcore older ones even have neck wounds from when slaying was done by beheading."

"And that worked?"

"Not technically... we don't rely on oxygen to the brain, so it wouldn't automatically kill you. However, the next part of the process involved stuffing the body with garlic, and that worked. And now they know stakes do the job, which are much easier to carry around than axes."

Somehow, it didn't surprise Vlad much to see Ingrid so caught up in the gory details. She was like that. She'd probably love sleeping in a coffin, if her bedroom had been any indicator. One of the black wooden structures down in the crypt wouldn't have looked out of place in the bedroom full of Goth aesthetics.

"Shame. It would be hilarious to have Van Hellstinks caught with an axe."

Vlad laughed, snagging himself a chocolate bar while Ingrid wasn't there to slap his hand away from his own sugar stash. Ever since the cavity incident and Renfield as a dentist, Vlad was religious about brushing his teeth now.

"How much of that stuff have you got left to go through now?"

"About half, but I'll get through that by the weekend. After that we'll have a pretty clear idea who the potenials are, and it shouldn't be many. A few more will probably be able to be cut off the list based on whether or not they would have even touched a breather, let alone left her alive afterwards. I swear, I will help you figure this out."

Ingrid eyed him with open suspicion, and Vlad immediately felt on guard.

"Why does this matter so much to you?"

"Because I don't want to be a vampire, and I've had years to get used to the idea. I can't imagine going through it with barely any notice and so much uncertainty. Whatever I can do to make this easier for you, I will."

Still against the whole expressing feelings with words thing, Ingrid dragged him into a kiss that left Vlad's lips feeling bruised, but his heart was pounding and his blood flush with exhiliration. Sure, he'd help Ingrid even if she wasn't... like this with him, but he couldn't deny it was one hell of a bonus.

-YD-

Oh no, they got distracted before Vlad could remember if Dracula was on the list. Who could have predicted that? Except me, obviously.