A/N-- Hello once more! We get to meet all of our villains today... enjoy!

M&M's to reviewers:
The Princess Anna Valerious- Are you happy now:-P Here's your chapter, chica!
Anthem82- I hope you think this chapter is just as cool!
Irish Anor- Yes, mucho Gabriel angst coming! Just not this chapter, I don't think.
HyperCaz- EXPLOSIONS! Ohh yes, action is fun!

The title of this chapter is taken from a song by Clannad.


Chapter 12:
The Poison Glen

"How does one destroy the world?" Chaos asked herself aloud.

Several minions looked up, but no one answered. They recognized rhetoric when they heard it. After all, she was a goddess- how could they dare to venture an opinion, asked or not? To do so would be to imply that they knew better than she, their mother.

"One does not do it alone." The goddess continued, sliding off of her dais with a rustle of silk, revealing a long line of white thigh as her dress pulled up. Those closest to her immediately averted their eyes. "One needs help."

"That is why we are here." One brave male ventured.

Chaos turned to him and smirked, letting out a low laugh.

"You are my soldiers. A drop in the ocean of my army. What I need are lieutenants who can act on my behalf. After all, I'll be very busy." She paused; the whole room held its breath. "And I know just who to appoint. It's just a matter of getting them here..."

"Where are they? Perhaps one of us can fetch them."

Now her black-on-red eyes fell to the priest who had seen her vessel at the sight of the 'third marker.'

"They are nearly two hundred years in the future." She replied almost disdainfully, almost challenging. "I know how to bring them here. I know I have the power."

"Let me prove myself, my lady." The vampire-priest said with a swift, low bow. "I am sure I can accomplish it."

"What is your name?" Chaos asked, pretending to be intrigued.

"Ethan."

"Your name will be music to my ears if you can indeed accomplish this." She said in a low purr, her lips so close to his ear it made Ethan shiver.

She had teleported to his side, but she took her time in walking away so that the silk of her dress brushed across him, her bare arm touching his. He followed his goddess in a daze as she led him out of the room. The others bowed as she left, then went about their tasks. They would be the army. It was just a matter of waiting until they found out who their lieutenants were.


"Do we even know where we're beginning?"

Anna started a little at Carl's intrusion, then relaxed.

"No. I figured we'd ask around and see if anyone knew where there'd been an unusual amount of vampires, or anything unusual at all." The gypsy princess clenched her teeth around a sigh. "My people have been beaten so long they just curl up and let themselves be beaten now. They try not to notice anything that's unusual for fear of getting involved. When this is all over, I'm going to train them. Not all of them, but at least one or two everywhere, so that they won't have to be afraid anymore. Gabriel and I can't protect the entire country."

"Especially not with children running about." The ghostly friar even dared to add. He knew his heart would be thumping if he was corporeal. Anna was clutching to a very thin line of hope, slimmer than the moonbeams he composed himself of. If she clutched too hard, it would snap. He didn't want that to be his fault.

She merely smiled tightly and nodded, pushing back her hair from her forehead. "There have been no leads."

"Then we'll just have to find them." Carl supplied.

"How?"

"On one of his missions shortly after our first disaster here in Transylvania, Van Helsing and I were after someone who could change themselves into the shape of any creature by absorbing their essences. Unfortunately, having that many 'souls' in one body drove him mad and to murdering. He was still very clever though, nearly impossible to find. So we had to go into the one place where he was consistent: a bar in Wuppertal, a small German village. Van Helsing posed as the man we were after, saying he had found a way to transform into any human as well. He spent an entire night in there, carefully grilling every regular member to find out where the man's den was. We caught him the very next day."

"You're saying that you want me to pose as a vampire and find... a place where they might be." Anna asked, watching the Carl out of the corner of her eye.

"Yes. And your job won't even be as hard as Van Helsing's was... he had to interrogate the regulars in such a way that they wouldn't know they were being interrogated, and he was posing as someone they already knew. You, however, will get to create your own identity without having to worry about discovery. Plus, the coming of their goddess is likely to be the talk of the vampire world. With any luck, you won't even have to press to discover where she is."

"Who said we had any luck left?" Anna laughed a broken laugh, one that Carl felt sure would cut him if he were real. "But I'll do it"
The Friar took a steadying breath before he continued.

"Anna, I've been trying to locate Van Helsing. No one in any of the other dimensions seems to know, but-"

"I don't want to hear it, Carl." She cut him off. "Right now I have to think about saving this world."

"But can you do it alone?"

"You'd better hope I can." Anna replied grimly.

Carl could almost hear her lifeline, her love, straining. He hoped desperately it wasn't about to snap. The truth was that they were very much alone, and very much in over their heads. But Anna was wrong: they did have quite a store of good luck yet. It just happened to have gone bad at some point. At that particular point, Carl was afraid it had become quite rotten.


The vampire bar was noisy, so noisy the string quartet could barely be heard. Anna was shocked that there was even a string quartet there.

I'm Margerite now. She reminded herself. Margerite, the young vamprie from far, far, away who is just staying here for a while.

A little nervously, she toyed with her hair. Carl had instructed her on how to wear it, and it was twisted up into a clip, but so that it had a tail that flopped over the clip and trailed down her neck in ringlet curls. She had put extra make-up on to look paler, her eyes outlined darkly and her lips painted blood red. She felt rather melodramatic, but Carl insisted that was the effect they were going for.

The skirt made her nervous too. Her mother had bought it a very long time ago from Spain; it was red and layered, somewhat like a flamenco dancer's dress. The top was billowy and loose, hanging off her shoulders and leaving them bare, the same as with her arms. She wore several heavy gold bracelets, a ring on each hand- so that her engagement ring didn't seem suspicious, according to Carl -and long gold earrings.

It's official. I look like a fool. She decided, taking a deep, steadying breath and then plunging into the bar.

The first thing that hit her nose was the overwhelming scent of blood, so thick it made her feel faint. She steeled her resolve and forced herself to breathe it in deep, like she was enjoying it. A young male nearby smiled at her, walking over to put his arm around her waist and pull her close. Anna smiled flirtatiously and then pushed him away with the same tsking noise she'd heard Aleera make once. He merely smiled at her and was about to move in again when she darted into a passing crowd and towards the bar.

Stay calm. You're a vampire. You pair off casually with whoever offers you pleasure all the time. Really, you do. She kept insisting to herself.

But I want Gabriel. Only Gabriel. A much tinier part insisted.

Without thinking she sighed and dropped her head into her hands. She had never been alone in this. Velkan had scarcely been gone for a day when Van Helsing walked into her life, and he had been there for a year afterwards, helping her fight her battles. She had always seen herself as strong, independent, a lone crusader of a dying family, but that had been before she knew what it was to be truly alone.

"Sometimes our race is tiring, don't you think?" Said a silky masculine voice to her right. Anna's head shot up and turned to meet the eyes of the one who had spoken. "Especially for one as beautiful as yourself." There was a twinkle in his eyes as he took a drink from his mug.

"Are you trying to be one of those tiring ones?" She still managed to make the accusation sound flirty, for which she gave herself points.

"No. I merely know beauty when I see it."

"Just appraising, then?"

"Yes. I am engaged elsewhere as far as romantic pursuits go."

"And you satisfy yourself with only one?" Anna didn't have to pretend to be surprised by this display of monogamy. After all, Dracula could content himself with no less than three Brides.

"Oh, she is more than satisfying. More than any of us could ever handle. Even without sharing her bed."

Anna felt her heart beat a little faster at that. The light of a zealot was in his eyes.

"Surely not sooverwhelming. Why, we live in a world of debauchery and decadence and pleasure without price. We live in one of the most extravagant societies left. Tell me the name of this lady love of yours."

"Chaos." He caressed the word in a way beyond description, in a way that a human tongue never could.

"Our mother." Anna breathed out, leaning in. She didn't have to play at being mesmerized either. This could be vital, so it didn't take much to pay attention.

"Yes. Soon, if my spell succeeds, I will have a goddess singing my praises." He shivered and closed his eyes. "It's a heady feeling."

"I'm sure." Her heat was pounding too loud. Surely someone would hear it. It only beat harder when the man began to look closer at her.

"You feel it too." He whispered, leaning forward and placing one cool hand over her heart. Anna wished for a more concealing blouse then, for Gabriel to burst into the room and demand that the strange zealot unhand his fiancee, for this whole godforsaken mess to be done with. "So warm..." The man breathed, his grey eyes slowly changing, shining silver. Ivory fangs brushed his lips.

"Ethan."

Anna's heart stopped at the suddenness of the new voice's interruption. 'Ethan' moved away and turned to look at the woman who had approached.

"Everyone is fed and ready. We should leave now."

"Are the others already there?" He asked.

The blonde woman nodded. "They set up the clearing by the cliffs as you said. They are waiting, and so is our goddess."

Ethan nodded and stood. He cast one last glance at the frozen statue that was Anna and then leaned down to trace the curve of her neck.
"You are a young one. Your pulse is still so fresh, so alive." He leaned down and brushed lips, fangs and tongue across the artery in her neck. Anna shuddered in revulsion, but he didn't notice. "Yet you will come. Everyone will come. Soon we will be theonly society this world knows." So suddenly that had she been leaning on him she would've fallen over, Ethan and his companion left, joined by several others on their way out.

Anna remained still after they were gone, but her mind was running in circles. She couldn't follow them; they'd sense her too easily. This was exactly the sort of thing they'd have used Cathy for: she could've followed them soundlessly, or even gone with them undercover. The gypsy princess hadn't thought about it before, but she missed Cathy almost as much as she missed Gabriel. It was a confusing feeling. How could she miss the woman who was at the source of all this, who had no soul, who had lied to her, who had sent the man she loved into Hell?

I'm alone now. She reminded herself harshly, fist clenched under the bar. No one else matters.

"Can I get somethin' for ye, miss?" Asked the bartender, leaning near Anna.

"No." She responded with a quiet, deadly edge. "No one can do anything for me now. I'm alone."

Following the path taken by Ethan and his group earlier, she exited. There were plenty of forests and cliffs in Transylvania, but if she followed the world's sense of irony, it would lead her to one particular cliff; a cliff she'd stood on, looking out over a river, whispering to God to help her, because it was the first time she'd found herself alone. That was after Velkan had left her life and before Gabriel walked into it. Now she had to go back there, which was where the irony came in. That cliff embodied loneliness, which she thought she knew when she last went there.

As she found her hidden clothes and ducked into a seemingly empty house to change back into them and began to check her weapons, Anna realized she had no idea what Ethan was even doing in the clearing where she and her brother had once baited a werewolf. He'd mentioned something about a spell that needed to succeed. She had no idea what the spell was for or anything at all- another queer pang of longing struck her as she thought of Cathy's experience with magic -but it didn't matter so much. What mattered was that the woman had said that Chaos was there.

"And who am I to keep a goddess waiting?" Anna asked the cold night air. She borrowed a horse from the stables of an inn, leaving money in its stall and a note saying she'd return it, and headed off without waiting for an answer.


The night wasn't nearly as captivating as the one when Cathy had saved her life, not nearly as enchanting. Anna was sure there was a reason for that.

She tethered the horse a safe distance away and began to walk the rest, remembering Velkan walking at her side once. She remembered alternately pleading with him and yelling at him, desperate for her only brother not to use himself as bait for the werewolf.

"Anna, Dracula let the monster loose to attack us. There is no way he won't attack if it's me."

"But what about me? Why can't I do it?"

"Because you're my baby sister and I'd go mad watching you tied to that pole-"

"It's not going to be tightly!"

"-without being able to do anything." They came to a stop and Velkan put one hand on each of Anna's shoulders. "Besides, you know you're a better shot than me. If you're tied to a pole and I'm the one with the gun, do you really trust me to shoot the wolf?" There was the old Velkan twinkle in his eye, the same one he'd always had. She wrapped her arms around him tightly, left a kiss on his cheek, and then joined the others.

In the end, Velkan had been the one to shoot the werewolf. He'd been the one tied to the pole, too. And Anna was the one left standing on a lonely cliff, asking the God four hundred years of Valerious dead had never laid eyes on for help.

She shook away the memories and found that deep, quiet place in her mind many used for meditation, cleansing their soul of pain and finding peace. She used it mostly for killing.

After a while she was jogging, jogging but in her mind remaining completely still, poised to strike. She wasn't exactly sure she'd be killing tonight. She wasn't sure how one killed a goddess. Then another memory hit her:

"Wooden stake." Cathy said suddenly. "A wooden stake ought to do the trick. Like in the old movies."

She didn't know what a movie was, but she knew now that Cathy may have been dropping a hint. Maybe she sensed that she was starting to give in and wanted the world to have a way out.

Anna found a conveniently shaped branch on the ground and honed its point a little more with the knife from her boot. When she got back to the Valerious Manor she would saw off a table leg and fashion a better one, but for now this would do. For now she had to worry about the flowers she had discovered.

Flowers shouldn't have been a big deal. They were a part of nature. But they weren't a part ofthis part of nature. She had never seen flowers before, not when she was here with Velkan, and not any of the times afterwards.

They were roses, lush and vibrant as if each individual flower had been given its own personal expert care from the moment it bloomed. They were the kind of flowers that don't grow in untamed wilderness. And what's more, they were blue, the shocking kind of electric blue the sky sometimes takes.

She had another memory, of her mother brushing her hair and telling her about roses. They could be white or red or pink or yellow or even a purple so dark it looked black, but never blue. Many had dreamed of a blue rose, but it had never been found.

Anna shivered. Maybe she wasn't alone after all. Her memories were keeping her good enough company.

She began to move on, more cautiously than before. Then another rose bush appeared to her, and another, and another. Soon there was a trail of them all around her, some so large that she couldn't help but brush them as she walked past. She hissed when one thorn caught the back of her hand, leaving an inch long cut.

Naturally, it was at that moment she heard voices raised in chanting.

Without thinking Anna took out her knife and tore a strip from her blouse, tying it around her hand. Then she kept the knife in one hand and the stake in the other and advanced. She was met with a wall of trees: this was where she and Velkan had said what amounted to their good-byes. Careful, she crept along the side of the clearing and found a tree she could scale. Once secure in her perch, knife away now, she looked down into the clearing.

It was ringed entirely in the impossibly blue roses she'd been seeing, so thick their scent was cloying. It was an odd scent: sweet, but it reminded her of death and decay. Maybe it was the vampires in the clearing.

They wore blue robes. All their eyes glowed blue, as impossibly blue as the roses, and all of them were chanting. They stood in a semi-circle along the edge of the clearing opposite her. There were three on one side with the eerie blue eyes, and then there was Ethan, and then three more to his other side.

Slowly the chanting died down. It had been monotonous; the ceremony was most definitely not winning points for captivation of the audience. Now Ethan stood aside and the woman who had interrupted their conversation at the bar came forward with another woman, bound and struggling, before her. Remorseless, she flung her into the center of the clearing. She cried out and tried to curl up to disguise her nudity. Her brown hair was matted and tangled, and she was lean in the way of those who get just enough to eat but have to work hard to get it. When Ethan's female partner began to approach again, she let out a strangely inhuman whimper.

The vampiress seized the other woman by the hair and forced her to sit up with her head back. It was then that the telltale howl left her throat. The woman was a werewolf, calling out for aid from her pack. A pack that would probably not come. Anna felt her loneliness.
The vampires didn't care. The six who had been chanting turned to the bushes behind them and began to pluck bowls. They moved in a procession to Ethan, who held a bowl, and one by one began to shred the roses so that their blue petals fell into the bowl. They then threw in the stems.

Ethan pulled a mortar from his robes, like the ones Anna had seen apothecaries use, and began to grind the contents of the bowl surely but steadily. After a moment, he moved forward. His assistant gave their captive's hair an extra hard jerk, causing the mournful baying to turn into a pitiable whimper. Ethan stood above her and raised the bowl. His assistant forced the other woman's mouth open and as the droning chant began anew he poured the now liquid contents of the bowl into her mouth.

The vampiress threw the woman to the ground again, as if she'd touched something distasteful.

Ethan stood back and proclaimed, in a bold voice:

"I offer to you this flesh that is more than mortal but less than immortal. And by it I call forth the poison that unites everyone forever, across space and time: death." With those words the woman gave another small whimper and curled in on herself, skin paling, eyes deadening. She had died frightened and forsaken. "I call forth, by death, those from another age. I call forth Alyssa, high priestess to the goddess Chaos, and Kimber, daughter of Time itself. I call them forth to this poison glen."

With that every rose left in the strange clearing where another werewolf had been once, not so long ago, began to shiver in some unseen wind. The vampiric chanting grew louder and louder, more fervent, blue eyes glowing, as the roses were stripped of their petals and they danced around the clearing in a circling curtain of blue. Faster, faster, faster they swirled, so fast Anna was afraid she'd lose her seat because of the nonexistent wind and then Ethan gave one final piercing cry, the cry vampires made in mourning their dead.

There was a flash that hurt Anna somewhere in the back of her head, and she realized she'd hit it on the tree trunk behind her when she could see again. The six chanters had frozen, their eyes slowly dimming back to their regular colors. Ethan had collapsed to the ground, panting. His assistant appeared unconscious beside him.

The bushes around them had been stripped of every rose petal and they now lay on the ground, beautiful in an aimless, artistic sort of way. The werewolf girl was gone, but in her place stood two other women.

One was fairly tall, slender, with dark brown hair that was perfectly straight and shone whenever the light touched it in a way that reminded Anna of Cathy's hair. Her eyes were a light hazel, with a honey overtone. She might have exuded warmth were it not for the bitterness in her eyes and her face. She wore clothes that reminded Anna of Cathy's as well, what the vampiress would've dubbed 'modern.'

Whereas the first woman was somber, the second was smiling wickedly, looking around herself as eagerly as a child taking in the world for the first time. Her skin was so pale it was nearly luminescent, and her blonde hair was frighteningly light too. Her eyes were a strange shade of purple, inquisitive, but somehow possessing the power to make her shudder. The gypsy princess decided that she must have been the one Ethan referred to as Time's daughter, and that the other must've been Chaos's high priestess.

There was clapping from the shadows, bringing another memory flittering to the surface of Anna's mind. It was one of a certain vampire count. When the clapper came into the light of the clearing, Anna knew that this was the woman he learned all his tricks from.

She was slight of build and height, dressed in a tight bodice that spilled her white cleavage into the light while a swirling skirt adorned her from the waist down. Her hair was black, streaked with white. Eyes that were red where they should've been white and entirely black where there should've been color shone with pleasure. Anna knew, in a way that made the hairs on her neck stand on end, that she was in the presence of a goddess. It was the same presence she'd felt in the clearing the night Cathy saved her.

"My goddess..." Ethan rasped out, reaching out to brush the hem of Chaos's skirts.

The mother of all vampires bent slowly to brush her hand along his face "Ahh, but I said it would be your name that was music to my ears, didn't I?" She crooned. She left a kiss on his forehead and slowly he drifted into unconsciousness too. "Alyssa! Kimber!" She grinned, moving towards the two women. Alyssa appeared to be the dark haired and Kimber the light haired.

"Has the time come, my lady?" 'Kimber' asked, swaying back and forth.

"Yes. It has. And with your mother already helping me, I thought I'd enlist you." Chaos smiled again. She turned to the dark haired one. "Your sister has already done her part, Alyssa. It is time for yours."

'Alyssa' snorted.

"Cathy. She finally gave in, did she? The eternal fighter. I'm glad to see her fall."

Anna leaned forward slightly. Now she could see the slight similarities in Alyssa's face and Cathy's when she thought about it. Alyssa was the high priestess of the goddess living within her sister, and she seemed to hate the woman.

But who was this Kimber's mother, if she was the daughter of time itself? Surely not the Wavewriter? And how was this person already helping?

There was no time for that, only for sliding carefully down the tree and towards the clearing, trying not to think about the awful pounding of her heart as she slowly raised her stake and gathered her nerves.

There was nothing to do but rush into the clearing, kicking up a flurry of blue petals as she did so. In instants she was lying on her back, just as the eight vampires of the ceremony were. Anna pulled herself quickly to her feet to see Chaos standing around a foot away from her, smiling. Kimber was regarding her curiously. Alyssa held in her hands two wicked looking knives.

"Now, who is this?" Chaos purred, beginning to stalk in a circle around Anna. Her arm struck and she tried to drive the stake into the goddess's chest, but she found her arm in a lock and herself twisted to the ground.

Exactly the way Cathy dealt with that man in the bar. She thought vaguely. Except Cathy hadn't really been about to break the man's arm.

"I am Chaos. Vampire Goddess, Mother of Vampire-kind, the real 'Queen of the Damned,' extraordinaire. Who does that make you?" Chaos smiled maliciously, her breath hot against Anna's neck. A sudden wetness there informed her of the quick flick of the tongue against her skin, mimicking Ethan's earlier action. "I can taste your fear and your anger and your determination, little princess. I remember what it felt like to take you under with my magic. Remember that, remember that you have been in my thrall before, or I will do more than just taste your emotion on the air."

There was a sudden, crushing weight on Anna's chest, but there was nothing physically there. Her breath choked and sputtered in her throat as Chaos's power continued to press in around her, into her, until she could see white in front of her eyes again.

She hit the ground in a daze for the second time in minutes, incapacitated by mere presence. She rolled onto her side and coughed, searching for air, seeing nothing but blue in front of her.

"I let you live because I want competition when I try and destroy this world. I want a game out of this. I expect you to give me one." Chaos's voice came from somewhere behind her and faded by the word. She was walking away as Anna discovered when she rolled onto her back and watched as the goddess left, Alyssa and Kimber flanking her. The eight unconscious vampires, Ethan included, lumbered after them mindlessly, dogs obeying a whistle no one else could here.

"And since I expect a game out of you, I think you might want to take care of that little cut of yours." With that, and Chaos's laughter, the little troop continued to move away.

Anna struggled to her knees and watched them leave, too dazed to try and follow. Now she was remembering that terrifying night, being sucked under by that ageless, seductive power. It had just touched her, forced her into submission, tasted her skin. She shivered and tried to hold herself. She felt violated down to her very core by the raw evil of that presence, that power that, touch.

What cut had Chaos meant?

The princess glanced at her hand and remembered the rose from earlier. It had been the juice of those roses that killed the werewolf girl.
She ripped off her makeshift bandage and hissed. The tiny cut had turned a nasty shade of green and puffed up. Some sort of white liquid was oozing out of it. The hand was starting to throb.

Anna immediately began to try and suck out the poison. As she spit it on the ground she imagined she was spitting on Chaos, whose laughter still rang in her ears. Then she felt herself falling onto the ground, littered with its blue petals. The useless wooden stake rolled from her hand as her eyes slid closed. She lay in the poison glen, forsaken but not frightened, simply lonely. Even her memories weren't there to keep her company then, as black closed in.


A/N-- I hope you enjoyed my much delayed update. My usual excuses and apologies for this! On a side note, what I said about the blue rose is in fact true: genetic engineers have been trying tirelessly to create one, but it hasn't worked yet. I took liberty with the poison thing.

Next chapter we'll see some more of what Chaos's plan is and also how Anna will handle this alone. That was actually a theme I only stumbled upon today. I was quite pleased with it myself! I hope you were!

Anyway, I'll be going in to have my wisdom teeth removed today so I'll be out of it for a bit, but some reviews would certainly make me feel better! Au revoir, for now!