I'm getting ahead of myself. I thought I'd updated with this until Pottergal22 reviewed; I checked my chapter count and, whoops, this was sitting in my Doc Manger waiting to be uploaded.
Sorry to say, I don't know exactly when I'm going to be next updating because I'm going abroad to ski... which promises snow, cold and no Wifi. :( So the next update won't be for at least two weeks.
I'm also hope you don't get confused as I keep jumping between the 'Past' and 'Present'. I want to keep things with Vlad, but the backstory with Robin and Esta is important. Only a few more chapters though and then the two will combine. :)
Potters of the Future: I can't tell you. That's spoilers. ;)
Enough waffle! On with the chapter!
Vlad lay in his coffin, staring mournfully at the lid, trying to picture the ceiling beyond. It was the best distraction he could think of at present.
Erin had been a slayer.
Vlad wanted to roll over, but that's not something easy to achieve inside a coffin. He wondered what the dust he had found inside here had been, along with a few shards of glass.
Erin is a slayer.
It's not like you didn't have your suspicions, he tried to reason with himself. No, a little voice said, you had trusted Erin. You had had no suspicions.
But when you discovered she was human, you did wonder why she had picked up Ingrid in the first place, why she had pretended to be a half-fang.
That's true, the voice said, but you'd hung around with Robin too much to really consider it. For all you knew, Erin could have been another vampire enthusiast, just much better at hiding it.
But a slayer…
No, Vlad thought, not now…
His thoughts drifted away and he fell asleep, or as close to sleep as you can get when you're undead.
There was a problem at Dover. A group of men had been found on board the ship with no passports. The security guard who found them wondered how they managed to get onboard in the first place. They shouldn't have been allowed into the docks, let alone onto the ship.
The security guard thought about contacting his friend in the Calais port for a laugh. He needed something light hearted after this huge security breech.
The whole of Dover port was in uproar. Who were these people? How had all eight of them managed to get onboard the ferry without being noticed at Calais? Were they terrorists? What did they want?
But there was a smarter guy (who happened to work at the waiting station Burger King) who first asked, 'if they could get onto the ship without being caught, why did they let themselves now?' He was then shouted at by his boss for letting burgers burn whilst he chatted.
But the point remained, and quickly spread. Why had they been caught? If they are clever enough to get on, why couldn't they get off?
Maybe they are terrorists, people said, and they let themselves be caught to scare people more than a bomb would. Or maybe they let themselves be caught because there's a bomb onboard and being led away by police is the quickest way of travelling away from it. As soon as that rumour spread, people began fleeing from Dover like crazy. It was only after the police thoroughly searched the ferry and ports either side of the channel did they deem it safe to return.
The group of eight, however, seemed unfazed by the havoc their appearance had caused. When asked what they wanted by the chief of police at the local station, their leader placed a slip of paper on the table and said, quite calmly, 'we want to speak to the people on the other end of this line.'
With a grunt, the chief of police allowed it, but set one of his officers to eavesdrop the conversation, just in case they were terrorists. The officer returns saying that he could barely understand the conversation, but he did pick up certain words: Slayer, Soluna, Destroy and Chosen One.
The chief of police puzzled over this, before jumping to the conclusion that the Soluna must be an expert branch of terrorists who were in Britain to destroy a chosen destination. When he had thought of that, he reached for the phone to contact Scotland Yard, the Minister of Defence, anyone with high authority who would listen to him.
His misunderstanding never made it that far. At that moment, the building blacked out.
The chief of police grunted and stood up to head for the door. His beer belly bumped against his desk as he stood up. He had barely taken two paces when the door burst open and an officer scrambled through.
'They're… they're glowing!' he stuttered.
'Who are?' the chief of police snapped.
'The… the men in the cells,' the officer spluttered, 'they're… they're glowing, like… like ghosts.'
'Don't be stupid, man,' the chief of police growled, pushing the officer aside and striding over to the door, 'men don't glow. They…' he froze.
A man, one of the men from the cells the chief of police realised, was standing in the corridor outside his door. And just as the officer said, he was glowing from head to toe, like he had been dipped in luminescence.
But it was unlike the luminescent glow that glow sticks or any other glow in the dark material. He was pearly white, the colour of the full moon. Wisps of light drifted off his shoulders and out of his hair like fine white sand caught in a breeze. He looked vaguely transparent. He turned towards them and they saw his blank white eyes. He stretched out a hand towards them.
The chief of police slammed the door shut with all his might. His brain jammed and refused to budge from the ghostly image of the man outside.
He hurtled for his desk, fingers fumbling for the receiver of his phone. He found it, put it to his ear, began to dial, and heard an unfamiliar silence.
'The phone lines have been cut,' he said in a hoarse whisper, replacing the receiver.
Behind him, the officer whimpered. 'Can't ghosts walk through walls,' he said in a small voice. They both stared, expectantly, at the door.
Outside the door to the chief of police, Dover Division, the pearly white man found a key, put it in the lock and turned it. Then he went back down the stairs to where the rest of the group were waiting. Each were glowing a different colour, four pearly white, four a golden hue. Their leader gestured and they walked out of the police station unhindered.
Outside, a black van was waiting.
It was all over the news the next few days, how the men found on the Calais-Dover ferry escaped the Dover Police within five hours of being arrested. The only photograph of the group was splashed across the front pages of every newspaper in England. Every page discussed how they did it, how did they organise the black out, how did they organise the rescue van. How did they get out the cells, inspectors asked across the city, when the doors were still firmly locked when checked later? How did they glow, officers discussed in the late hours after their shifts had ended, were they really ghosts?
A newspaper reporting this managed to make its way to Count Dracula a day or two after it had happened. It was passed onto him by Mrs McCauley, who thought that he needed to be educated in modern affairs. He gave the front cover a once over before moving to the gossip section.
After that, it went on the fire.
In a small country village, miles away, a car parked outside the local pub and a young man jumped out to get directions. His female companion clambered out of the mini after him, if only to stretch her legs. She headed for the local store to get a newspaper for the day and catch up on all the news she'd missed that week.
She picked up the first newspaper and stared at it.
It was just like all the others. Its heading read "Dover Scare Increases as Suspects Escape". The girl snorted and her eyes dropped to the picture. It was of a young man being forced into the back of a police van by officers. His hands were cuffed, but his face was grinning. Her face froze.
Seconds later she was racing out of the shop and across to the car as her companion emerged. He greeted her with a grin.
'They say there's a castle not far away that's recently been repossessed,' he said, 'the owners aren't too friendly, they said. This could be it, Esta…'
'Just shut up and drive, Robin!' the woman snapped, flinging the paper into the back, 'shut up and drive. We need to find them.'
'Geez,' the man muttered, 'what's wound you up?'
'We just need to get there fast,' the woman said, leaning her head against the window, 'before they do…'
The man knew it was best not to ask who she was talking about. He turned out into the main village road and drove.
:) We're slowly getting there. Thank you, all of you, for your reviews. Thank you for sticking with me!