Author's Note
I do not own Young Dracula.
This is the last real chapter. There's an epilogue to come, just to finish things off, but it's very short. Big thank you to everyone who has followed and favourited!
They found Robin with a feral clan in Scotland. The clan themselves were little more than animals, skulking round in a cave system, living off rats and cats. The leader was a girl with a tangle of black hair and deadly aim with lightning bolts. She was the only one there with any real power though. The others huddled around her like children begging for safety. She scorned them, Vlad could see it in her eyes. He knew that look.
Robin too looked little older than the last time Vlad saw him, but his hair was longer now, his eyes darker, and his skin even paler. He looked worse than when they found Chloe, half-starved, sickly and starving. Vlad and Ingrid took him hunting that very night. He drained two cows and a breather before he even started to look healthy again.
"Chloe," was the first thing he said.
"She's safe."
"You look good," was the second.
"You look like death warmed up a little," said Ingrid, which was the truth.
They returned to Garside Grange with another addition to their family.
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Robin was more violent than Vlad remembered him. He was short tempered and always gearing up for a fight. The moment he saw Chloe he threw himself at her and knocked the smaller girl to the ground, the two of them rolling over at vampire speed until they managed to disengage.
After that they were inseparable, moving into a separate room together and making sure they never had to be apart. They were anxious only being on separate sides of a room from each other, constantly glancing at the other to make sure they were still there.
Sometimes it made Vlad happy and sometimes it made him sad. They were never that close as humans. It reminded him of another brother-sister pair he could think of.
Even now, he and Ingrid had fallen back into old routines.
If they weren't in their bedrooms, they were together. No ifs, no buts, no maybes about it.
But then he normally had at least some of his little family at his back these days. They were there for him.
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Their mum came and tried to take Sirius away. Ingrid laughed in her face. "You left him here without a goodbye, you didn't even name him, and now you want him back?"
"Well darlings, he is my son. He's only your brother."
"He is staying right here."
"Ingrid darling, try and stop me taking him." Magda flashed over to the table Sirius was hiding under. Erin got there first and picked him up. He wrapped his arms tightly around her neck. Magda grabbed at him. "Let go you worthless half-fang."
Erin snarled. Vlad snarled louder. He flashed to her side and tossed Magda away across the hall. "Get out. If I ever see you again I will turn you into a snivelling pile of dust!"
"You don't have the guts! You never did, you spineless piece of-"
Magda didn't finish that sentence. Her mouth formed a funny 'o' shape.
Erin had just slammed a very long, very sharp stake through her chest.
Magda exploded into ashes.
Erin blinked. "Huh. I make a better Slayer as a vampire than as a human. Who'd have guessed?"
"Is she gone now?" asked Sirius. Vlad took him from Erin's arms. It had to be the first time he'd actually held the boy (unless one counted when he was a baby, which Vlad didn't).
"Yeah. She's gone now." He glanced at the pile of dust that had been his mother. "Someone should really sweep that up. It's making the place look bad."
Reducing one parent to a pile of ash had been horrifyingly easy.
He wondered how hard it would be to reduce the other one to the same state.
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His eighteenth birthday brought yet another power boost. He had been just able to match Sethius before, now he could out power him easily.
He used some of the power to give his family a boost. Chloe and Robin quite noticeably grew, only a little, but they grew. Ingrid and Erin took a boost to their vampire powers, while Olga's leg healed enough for her to stop limping.
It was nice to help one's family.
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No one questioned their authority now, and they had no need to keep hiding in the shadows.
They announced war on anyone who refused to bow to them. It took two years, but Sethius came out to face them instead of hiding like the coward he was. He monologued about his great master plan to slaughter the breathers in their millions, how they would like there was no tomorrow (which there wouldn't be if all the breathers were dead and their source of food gone), how it would be a new vampire dawn with him at the head as the all powerful leader.
Vlad laughed.
He wasn't anywhere near all powerful.
He wasn't even as powerful as Vlad.
They fought, red against blue, clashing in the centre. His family fought by his side, keeping any who might stake him in the back away.
Robin and Chloe had a field day.
They won, as if there had ever been any doubt or question about that. They won, and Vlad ashed Sethius. His forces submitted almost immediately. Vlad ordered them ashed too. They had stood against him once. He wouldn't risk it happening again.
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The last person to stand in his way was, of course, his own father, the once mighty Count Dracula. He hadn't been the same since Magda was ashed. In fact, they had barely seen him. Vlad suspected he was hiding from them until he could concoct a new scheme.
He reappeared at the Council chambers while they were holding a war Council. The vampires of the world had been divided for too long, pure bloods against half-fangs, nobles against ferals, clans against clans. Elders against children.
It would stop here.
This would be a whole new world for the young of today.
"Vladdy! I heard you want to repeal the Faroman Rules."
"That's old news, we did that last week. Those laws were archaic."
Those laws were also the same ones that said females were worthless, that Ingrid and Olga were useless wastes of vampirism good only to be married off as bargaining chips.
Archaic indeed.
"But Vladdy! What will people think? This could uproot the old family ways!"
"Oh, and what a shame that would be," Ingrid drawled.
"It's a new age now dad. A new sunset. Your time is long past." Vlad stepped round him.
"You will destroy our way of life!"
"Good. Our way of life was pitiful and a waste. I'm going to make vampire society into something new."
In the end, they didn't need to stake the great Count Dracula, and he ran off to sulk somewhere.
