A/N: Its me Britt again writing this chappie, Steph will probably take the next two, I need a break!

Dracula: Tell me about it, I am sick of all this writing!

Your not even doing anything!

Dracula: Yea well you make me sit there and reread all this crap to find typos!

Then why is there still mistakes?

Dracula: I may look like it but I'm not perfect!

Your so conceited!

Dracula: Cry about it.

Uh, w/e heres the next chapter...and you Dracula, your going to the closet! MWAHAHAHA!

Dracula: :starts crying: NOOOO!

Drake reached his balcony with Sophia in his arms, her head resting on his shoulder and her dark curls tumbling about the both of them. He went over the railing and let her down once he landed on the white marble of the balcony.

She wrapped his cloak tighter around her and looked at him with an expression of awe.

He stood before her in all of his beauty, tattered great black wings spread out far and the moonlight made them glow with an eerie light. His eyes were sparkling with a delicious and dangerous gleam. He was absolutely the most amazing looking man she had ever seen.

He held out his hand to her with a slight smile playing on his full mouth as his great wings retracted and sheathed magically into his back without ripping his jacket. "Come inside and get warmer Sophia."

She smiled innocently and took his hand and followed him inside his room past the two heavily draped French doors.

Upon entering the room she felt considerably warmer and wanted nothing more than to get dressed and enjoy her new found company. She had realized after she had seen the great pain in his beautiful eyes when mentioning his wife that was no more that she could be his friend, and maybe more. She now knew he was able to be compassionate, and then there was that undeniably attractive trait that was in his opinion pure damnation. For some reason him being a vampire had become appealing, maybe it was because she felt like she could trust him now, no matter how moody he was being the night before.

She walked into the room and watched him light the fireplace that she hadn't noticed next to the armoire. She sat on his bed wrapped in his cloak until he finished building the fire and walked over to her.

"It seems that you have nothing to wear at the moment , hmn?" He asked a sinful look playing in his eyes.

"Oh no! My gown we left it at the river didn't we!" she looked up at him her brow furrowed and her eyes worried.

He sighed, she was to innocent for his company, she didn't even slightly understand the implication in his last statement. He walked to the door of his room and opened it, "Hold on just a minute will you?" when she nodded he left and closed the door.

Once he was gone Sophia got up from the bed and decided to sit by the fire, in just his cloak she was very cold and needed to warm up considerably. While walking to the fireplace she stopped at his desk for there was a picture she hadn't seen the last time she was in the room.

The picture was actually a small painting of a young girl about her age with huge light colored eyes framed by delightfully arched brows. Her hair was very dark and very long, it had kinky and very charming waves in it and it fell about her heart shaped face in great cascades. Her face was solemn, as was every persons in a picture or painting, but her eyes were sweet and smiling. Sophia though back to when she had first awoke in Drake's bedroom and saw his sitting rigid at this desk looking at this picture.

This must be his wife…Sophia thought running a long finger down the length of the frame.

"Why are you looking at that?" she heard Drake sound from the door, his voice deep and demanding. His tone made her jump back from the frame. She saw he was holding a black dress in his arms.

"This is a painting of your wife isn't it?" she said quietly looking sadly into his threatening gaze.

"Yes and I would prefer you not go through my things." he walked up to her in a few easy strides and practically shoved the garment at her. "Go get dressed, there is a divider you may use over there." he pointed to a red changing divider by the bed. She went behind it and began to dress herself in silence, she could hear him walk in the direction of the fire and sit in one of the seats there.

How could he have gone to being so kind to being a scoundrel yet again? She thought while lacing up the low cut heavy black dress. The dress had a built in corset that tied in the front and the skirt was very full, its layers rustled when she moved. The bodice was very low and it lifted her breast high and made them very noticeable, the dress made her feel self conscious and cheap. The sleeves of it though made it more bearable, they went to her elbows and then fanned out into lace and flowed to the middle of her forearm.

When she was done getting dressed she came out from behind the divider and walked to the other seat by the fireplace. Drake looked up from the fire and looked her over with a critical eye.

"It fits you well." he mumbled and looked back into the fire.

"Why are you angry with me?" Sophia asked quietly.

"I'm not angry with you." he said not taking his gaze from the dancing flames.

"Yes you are, you have been cold to me since you saw me look at that picture on your desk." Sophia sighed when he didn't even look at her let alone reply. "That's a painting of your wife isn't it? The one I remind you of."

"Yes…" he said now looking at her.

"Why does that make you angry that I looked at the picture?"

"I didn't want you to know…I didn't want it to happen again." he said pain streaking his beautiful face.

"Know what? The reason why she left you? It is alright you can tell me." Sophia reached for his hand but he got up and started pacing instead, right now her touch would drive him mad, he needed to be level headed when talking about the matter which mattered the most.

"We were to be married, in June, but one night after drinking heavily I was approached by a man on my way home." Drake took a deep breath and went on with his tale. " he said he was lost and needed to know where the Inn was, so when I turned from him to point in the Inns direction he was on me." Drake sighed looking at his hands for some reason that was beyond Sophia. "I tried to fight him off me as he dug his fangs in my neck, he had appeared to be so frail, he was a withered old man yet he had the strength of ten men! He didn't kill me, right before he drained me of my life he got off of me, and I passed out." he walked back to the chair he had been sitting in before and looked into Sophia's eyes.

"What happened next?" she said a worried look in her eyes, she was so full of compassion, compassion he didn't deserve.

"Once I woke I was in a dark room on the floor, the man was standing over me. He said his name was Dracula and that I was now a vampire and should be glad he saved me from my mortal hell." Drake looked desperately into her eyes trying to make her understand. "I didn't know how those things worked I was ignorant and unaware, after he told me I was a vampire because he bit me I yelled and screamed that I didn't want to be a vampire that I was to get married! That I wanted to be a mortal, that I wanted to be a husband."

"Of course you didn't know, not many do, I didn't." she stroked his cheek affectionately, undoing him.

" So after I told him this he looked down on me with false pity. He then told me a disgusting lie, one that I should have seen through but I was to desperate to think before I acted. He told me that if I were to drink his blood that it would serve as an antidote and counteract my current state. So he slit his pale wrist open and invited me to drink. So in my ignorance I did and became the damned, after it was done he laughed and told me the truth, he said that he needed someone to carry on his legacy and his name and that he had been watching me and wanted me to become Dracula now."

Sophia then went to him and sat at his feet taking his hand and putting it to her face resting her hand over his and the other on his knee.

He then took a deep breath and continued not taking his eyes from hers. "After he said this I found a sharp object next to me in the room and drove it through his chest, it just so happened it was a wooden stake and when I drove it through his chest he smiled at me and said thank you, he died, leaving me with his title." Drake rubbed her cheek lightly with his thumb. "I left the house and flew for the first time, taking myself to my fiancé's home." A tear then fell from the corner of his eye.

"Drake.." Sophia whispered wiping the tear from his cheek.

" When she opened the door I fell to my knees and told her everything, she looked at me horrified when I showed her my wings and terribly frightened when I showed her the fangs that were protruding from my mouth. She went into the kitchen then leaving my in the living room, when she came back she had a stake and a rope of garlic. I didn't understand what she meant, I loved her so much, I wanted her to accept the way I was then. But instead she came at me with the stake calling me a demon and the like. She didn't even act like she knew me. I ran from her home and then to my own, after gathering my things I fled there to." Drake stood the making her stand too, he placed both of his hands on either side of her pretty face. "Eventually I became known as the most merciless vampire known to both vampire and human, I became Dracula. After finding this abandoned castle I had a large following of the damned they either stayed here or in their own caves, it didn't matter much. No humans ever came to this place because it was said to be haunted and therefore dubbed my lair. I was a murderer, a monster, no longer a man. I had killed so many humans over the years, not claiming a single friend to me, only desperate animals like myself."

"Your no animal.." she laid a elegant hand on his broad chest.

"Thank you sweet Sophia but you don't know how animal like I was. Until one day about thirty years after I was made a vampire I attacked a young preacher, he didn't beg, he didn't plead he just said that it was the way of fate and that he didn't mind dieing if he had to, he was willing to give his body to quench my thirst and was sorry that I was leading the life I was. I let him live after he fainted. Then I flew away, he was Nicolae, but later I found that without my consent that Alhondra had done the same trick as the vampire who made me a vampire after I had left the preacher in the commentary I had found him in. Nicolae came to me many years later, the day his youngest daughter died. He was dreadfully thin and pale, worse than he is now, his eyes were sunken in and black as night."

"And I had a vile of my dearly departed wife's blood around my neck." Nicolae was standing at the door with a horribly sad look on his handsome face. " I'm glad to see you are back Sophia, I didn't want any harm to come of you child." he walked over to her and Drake and laid a hand on either one of their shoulders and kissed the top of her head. He than sat in the same chair by the fire that she was earlier.

"I asked Drake what I should do after I explained that my wife took me in and told our community I was dead, she had given me her blood when I needed to stay alive and kept me in our small home until she died. My daughters did the same keeping vials of their mothers blood for me to take once a year until they passed on into heaven also. I wanted so bad to die but was afraid of the consequence of suicide. I didn't want my damned soul to be rejected from heaven." he looked up at Drake and Sophia with a wane smile.

" He came to live here and has become my dearest friend, Romulus was an accidental addition on my part, he was a pup and rejected from his pack because he went after human blood, but in his innocence they didn't kill him only left him to die in the woods. He came to us once a week to learn from Nicolae and be entertained by me, he left for awhile to join others of his kind in France but he came back, he always comes back."

"Such a faithful hound." Nicolae said with a laugh that rang cheerfully like a bell.

"I'm sorry about what happened to you both," Sophia said quietly looking into Drake's eyes. "I'm sorry that the world has been so cruel to you." she whispered the last part of the statement to the man who stood before her now.

Drake then laid a soft kiss on her full mouth and pulled back smiling at her, she was so very sweet to him, how could he ever think another bad thought about her again?

"What is it that you wanted friend?" Drake asked Nicolae pulling his gaze from Sophia's face.

"I wanted to tell you something that I over heard our little friend Alhondra talking about with those other two that she seems to be physically connected to."

"What's that?" Drake asked an eyebrow raised.

"It seems she has approached a certain human named Ralph, about the location of our lair and our dearest Sophia."

Sophia gasped at that, her heart falling , she desperately clung to Drake's sleeve.

Then Drake boomed, "Tell me everything Nicolae."

Hope you guys liked this chappie, I was kinda proud. I thought it was good.

Dracula: No one else did.

Dammit how did you get out of the closet?

Dracula: Wouldnt you like to know?

Well get back in there!

Dracula: MAKE ME!

:Britt pulls out punjab:

Dracula: Okay okay! I'm going dear Authoress!