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She watched from the river bank. Even knowing it was fake, Agatha wanted to scream out at him to stop. She watched as he stepped up to the bridge railing, his height causing him to stand out from the crowd, even at this distance. Then he stepped up, swinging his leg over the railing, the crowd of commuters reacting like a shoal of fish, at first scattering, then turning to gawk but none of them stepped up to stop him. A moment later he was jumping and falling, and someone was screaming…it was her, she was screaming.
"Agatha."
His body hit the water like a dead weight and didn't come back up. People on the bridge were pointing and crying, and Agatha was still screaming.
"Agatha…"
She was being shaken, it took a moment to realise it wasn't a random passer-by.
"Agatha darling wake up it's just a nightmare."
Only it wasn't a nightmare, not really, it was a vision of what could be.
Sitting up from Mycroft's couch, Agatha allowed Dracula to pull her into his arms. He looked better than earlier, he had clearly fed several times whilst she tried to catch up on some lost sleep.
"Shush darling it will be all right, we can fix this." Dracula tried his best to reassure her, but the truth was he didn't know what was going to happen. Mycroft had been calm and in control as ever but even he was reserved about what could be done.
"Don't lie, not to me." Agatha insisted, pushing the comfort of his embrace away. She was not a child that needed coddling, and despite her fear of losing him, Agatha couldn't pretend she wasn't still furious with him. "Why did you even do this, were you bored, was I not enough for you?"
"Agatha…"
"No, I am serious." Agatha spat. "How could you been such a fool, you are normally so careful with what or who you feed from?"
"I don't know! I don't remember." Dracula growled back.
"I already told you everything I remember, I was at Gilles party, I had one drink there, then we went to the club and bumped into Sir Richard and few of his friends, they invited us back to a private party. I remember leaving the club but after that…" Dracula trailed off, his brows furrowed as he tried and tried to remember, and yet there was nothing, everything after that was one giant blur.
But what did it matter, Dracula knew he had drunk from those contaminated humans he could still feel how sluggish it had left him, and slaughtering them wholesale was something he would do…or could do…?
"It just doesn't make any sense…" Agatha trailed off, her own brow furrowed as she tried to work out what was bugging her about all this.
Yet before she had time to make any progress, the door to the office opened and Mycroft returned. Whatever hope they had that the situation could be resolved simply fizzled out with a shake of Mycroft's head.
For once even Mycroft looked worried. "Sir I don't think we can just smooth this over."
It was not the news that Dracula had been hoping for.
"Our informant has passed on that police were called to the address around nine this morning. They already have the entire block cordoned off, and forensics are crawling all over it. At present our only advantage is that no one knows you are not also a victim. From the description you gave me, it is going to take their forensics team days to piece together the different victims. There will also be no CCTV record of you leaving the apartment. I would suggest that our best option would be to report you missing."
"You want pass me off as a victim of my own crime?" It was twisted, and thusly appealed to Dracula's sense of dramatic irony immensely.
"It would buy us time if nothing else." Mycroft added. "Time, we need to sneak in a team to review the evidence collected. We will be able to judge then, if they have anything that even links you to the crime."
Of all the suggestions Dracula had been expecting that was not among them. Yet it would be just as effective as Agatha's suicide idea, with far less risk involved to him. It would still mean he would need to leave London for a while, or at least keep a very low profile.
"We can hide you here, until we know more." Mycroft suggested. "When we know if we need to get you out of the country, we can review our options."
"I would suggest you have Renfield raise the missing person report. You can fail to make an arranged call with him and not respond to his calls. I think it is best to keep any vampire involvement with the authorities to a minimum. Perhaps we can ask Captain Anderson to…"
"Not Anderson." Agatha suddenly spoke up, she had been mostly silent whilst Mycroft schemed. "I know he has contacts in the forensic teams, but I don't trust him."
"I would agree with Agatha, I would rather not have my future in the hands of a man that hates me."
"And do not run this past any of Baron de Rais's people either." When Dracula frowned at her she added. "He could have stopped you at any time. He chose not to. He sat there and used you like you were some cheap entertainment. He might even be lying entirely, have you even considered that, that he might be framing you; you don't even remember what happened?!"
"Dearest you do hear how paranoid you are sounding?" Yet whilst it touched him that Agatha wanted to think the best of him, Dracula knew this was exactly the sort of thing he was capable of.
In the old days he would have done it just for fun. He had toned down those tendencies, as he was very much a creature of whim and circumstance, but he knew there were lines Agatha simply would not cross.
"It's not paranoia if they are really out to get you." Agatha retorted, her tone sharper than she intended. "I just don't think we should dismiss any possibility here, no matter how far fetched it might seem. Even if the worse Baron de Rais is guilty of, is his negligence of care towards a fellow vampire; do you really trust him not to at least try to capitalise off it?"
Now in that Agatha did have a point, and Dracula already had made enough enemies, or at least adversaries, who would love to push him out the picture for a few years. The Pazzi family immediately came to mind, yes Elder Pazzi could easily use this lapse of judgement to punish him for slighting his family.
"No, we handle this quietly ourselves, Mycroft handles all the interactions with the team, and we pass your presence off here as some clan bonding, before the three of us, have to fly to Rome. If we need to get you out the country beforehand, then you are going to check on the renovation work at your estate."
"Agatha you can't expect to keep this quiet." Mycroft began warningly. "We might be able to handle the mortals but Baron de Rais has no reason not to spread the story."
"Yes, but for now it is his word against ours, if we don't blink, and we handle the threat then the other Elders might just let it slide." Agatha was more hopeful at this point than anything. The very thought of having Dracula taken away from her was making her cling desperately to any idea, no matter how ludicrous.
"I think you are being overly optimistic." Mycroft sighed. "They will at the least bring it up at the next Council meeting, if they don't call an extraordinary meeting just to deal with it, and we do need to be prepared for that. I would suggest we start considering a proposal for a voluntary exile, it would at least reassure them we are taking the matter seriously."
"It all seems a little much…" Dracula began not wanting to say out loud that he honestly thought they were overreacting, but he relented when both Agatha and Mycroft didn't so much as blink, as a pair the two of them could be quite intimidating. "Ok we play this your way… for now. Prepare for the worst."
There was only one thing Dracula needed confirming, exile he could handle but not if he was going alone, Agatha had to come with him. Now he had just to convince her of that.
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"Aggi what the fuck is going on?" A familiar voice asked from the doorway of the room Mycroft had assigned to them. It was close to the cluster of rooms being used by the Clan Dracula novices, and clearly rumours were already spreading.
"Lucy now is not the time." Of all the people Agatha didn't want to talk to right now, her little sister was near the top. It wasn't that Lucy didn't care about other people, she did in her own way, it was that Lucy would probably force Agatha to confront things, things that right now she was trying to avoid.
Questions like how she could possibly be in love and stay in love with a man, who could massacre a room full of people, and care more about the consequences for himself, than the very terrible crime he had committed? Or whether she would follow said man into exile, if the Elders forced it; give up everything for him, when she had already turned down a very similar offer? How would living with him in exile, be any different than getting married? She would still be giving up her clan, her work, her independence all for him. Agatha knew Dracula would ask it of her, probably demand it even, and Agatha had to be ready with an answer.
"Don't bullshit me sis I know there is more to this bonding crap than you are letting on. Joining us for lunch, so he could show off he'd finally gotten in your knickers was one thing; moving in to spend time with us, when he barely showed his face since turning us. No, I'm not buying it."
"Well you need to, for me, you need to make everyone buy it. Say I blackmailed him into it, say you heard he lost a bet, say anything you like Lucy but make it believable." Agatha hissed, her voice leaving no room for doubt. "I need you to support me in this, not undermine me."
"Then tell me what the fuck is really happening. What did big D do? Did he hurt you?"
"No!" Agatha retorted sharply. "He would never." Preferring to ignore the sceptical gaze Lucy shot her in return.
"I…I think he was set up." There now she had said it out loud, the thought that had been bugging her ever since she had first heard the story.
Turning to Lucy Agatha beckoned her inside, shutting the door firmly behind her.
"There was a party, it went very very wrong, as wrong as you can get with a vampire in amongst the whole room full of mortals. Dracula was compromised, because he drank the blood of mortals who had been taking drugs, we don't much of what happened after that, but all the mortals are dead."
"Fuck me." Lucy whistled her shock. "No wonder you got so pissed at me."
"Maintaining control takes everything we have. I only nag you about it because I care, because the last thing I would ever want is for you to find yourself in this situation." Agatha reached out taking Lucy's hand. "I hate to say this but its true so you might as well hear it from me, as precious as vampire life is, our Elders will not shy away from shedding it if they think for one second it will protect them."
"So how do we prove it? If Dracula was set up?"
"I don't know if we can." Agatha had to admit that she was defeated, a hunch wasn't proof, and without evidence the consequences wouldn't change.
It wasn't like she could go after Baron de Rais, with her abilities she might be able to force the truth out of him, but even getting to him would be difficult and why would the other Elders take the word of a child vampire who was far from unbiased over that of one of their own? It wasn't like she could find out what happened from anyone else, all the other witnesses were conveniently dead.
Or were they…
There was one other witness to the whole event, sure he claimed that he couldn't recall anything, but Agatha wondered if that was entirely true. After all even if Dracula didn't remember himself, he still carried echoes of all the people he had drank the night before, surely one of those would have been sober enough to recall what happened up to their death?
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