Sorry for the wait guys. What can I say? I am a serial procrastinator and I love tv.
"Oh my- Vlad." A woman of chestnut hair and brown eyes gaped at him. Mir ignored her. Behind her stood a large lobby with two elaborate staircases leading to an indoor balcony and then a door. The vampire found his eyes reluctant to draw away from a chandelier, hanging above, glittering silver where the paint had been scraped off. He deemed the woman fit of his attention again.
"Hi." "What are you doing here?" The two vampires said simultaneously.
Erin glared Mir into silence. "What are you doing here?" She repeated with more force. "It's a Saturday."
The breather twitched and Mir caught a whiff of the dynamic between her and Erin. There was distrust and there was caution. They both glanced at Mir.
He said nothing.
"I was helping Mr Count employ a new teaching assistant." The lady kept studying Mir, like she expected him to say something. Erin seemed to notice this as well.
"Don't keep looking at him like that; he doesn't even remember you."
Mir nodded affirmative.
The human seemed unsure of how to react. She glanced at him again and asked "Vlad?"
"Not here I'm afraid." The amnesiac said and glanced at the diurnal light crawling up the courtyard towards the two vampires. "Can we come in?"
Somewhat puzzled, vibrating with nervous energy the human let them in.
Erin and the woman started up the stairs but Mir halted in the centre of the room. His foot prodded a dent in the floor and he glanced at the black chandelier above him. "What happened here?" He directed his question to the vampire on the balcony.
Her brows furrowed. "Mir-what? Nothing happened there." She ignored the brunette glancing uneasily at Mir and his position. "Get up here, I want to see Ingrid's face when she realises you're alive."
He nodded in response, interested to know who this Ingrid might be and leapt at the balcony. Bending his knees slightly, his legs straightened and he made it to the ledge in a single bound, effortlessly snatching the guard rail and landing next to Erin.
He received a raised eyebrow in response. "You could've just climbed the stairs,"
They opened the double doors, Mir's palm sliding across the varnished wood, hoping to unlock the memories that were hiding behind the doors of his mind.
Up an unfamiliar hall and down a corridor he noticed the decor slowly shifting, not to something he recognised but something akin to a vampire residence. Erin was all smirks and grimaces. This strange behaviour made him wonder just what the people he had lived were like.
He heard them before he saw them.
Yells and shrieks rattling through the walls of the house and affecting the weather outside. Mir changed the weather once; an argument with Cheyenne had led to a lightning storm. Ironically, they'd been arguing about a fireball he'd accidently fired at Cheyenne's hideous sofa which she'd assumed was deliberate. She had been right, but that was beside the point.
Erin led them down a hall and stopped at the source of the noise. Opening the door she pushed Mir in first.
Two dark haired vampires blinked at him. He prepared his customary greeting.
"Hi."
With a little assistance from her, Mir stumbled into the throne room and Erin dragged Miss McCauley aside.
"That's not the Vlad you know and I need to tell you that before you aggregate him." The worry spilled out of her before she could dull the emotion. Her transformation into a soulless monster apparently hadn't damaged her care for the teacher in the slightest.
Alex frowned. "I don't quite understand what's going on." Her eyes locked on Erin apprehensively. "Vlad told me you tried to kill him."
"I did," the vampire replied sharply. "But I changed my mind." Her eyes softened minutely with concern. "Just avoid Vlad, please? He's not the boy you're used to."
Vlad was hidden somewhere deep in Mir, deep within the cold Mir who had been shaped by consequence. The consequence of Vlad's compassion. She stared at the teacher, hard for a moment, until Alex finally got the message.
"I don't understand," she said glancing towards then next room where Mir was. "But I'll trust your word."
Mir had remained calm in her absence. He spoke with his customary icy cadence and the two vampires nervously tip-toed around his words. They had no idea yet that he remembered nothing of them.
Erin slipped into the room behind him with the human in tow.
Mir calmly addressed her. "Heard your warning, would you like to explain?" Until now Erin had barely covered the difference between him and the him from before but now... She was warning people away from him. How different did that make Mir?
She only said the one word. "Russ."
Oh. He deserved that one.
Mir shrugged it off. "Are you going to tell them or shall I?"
"Tell us what?" the dark haired woman snarled, "Why have you bought her here?"
Erin grinned, pale rings of green flashing deviously. She was loving this - the power she had over the vampires in front of him. Simply because she knew him better than them at this moment in time.
This is Mir." Her hand slapped his shoulder. "He has no idea who you are."
They all looked at him. Mir gave a smirk in confirmation.
"Definitely not Vlad," The more aggressive vampire reared backwards, cold eyes furious but Mir thought he could spot fear among the shards of rage.
She turned her gaze on Erin. Her thoughts sailed through the air to reach the shorter vampire. Mir listened to them as they passed.
You brought him back. Why?
Instead of looking at Erin, and immediately reminding her that he could read thoughts Mir eyeballed the rest of the room.
He wanted to come home.
Absent from the mental conversation both the older vampire and the human brunette looked uncomfortable in the silence. Mir smirked at them. They seemed to find that even more concerning.
But why did you bring him back? He felt Erin twitch at his side. Last time you were together you handed him over to the slayers.
Do you really care? The green eyed vampire's expression soured and she cast a brief glance at him. He simply raised an eyebrow. You've been trying to kill him from the day he was named the Chosen One.
Chosen One? Unable to halt his surprise he glanced sharply at Erin. Her eyes flicked between the two vampires. She ignored his stare.
You may be a vampire now. The vampire's mental message hissed like a viper. But you're still the same slayer bitch who can't protect herself. Her cool eyes rested on Mir. They were so light; almost grey looking at if he was her favourite enemy. Too precious to destroy, too troublesome to spare. And you're still hiding behind my brother, hiding from the big bad vampires.
"So is anyone going to tell me who they are? I don't actually remember any of you except the slayer bitch here."
Neither of the vampires visibly reacted to his reference.
With a rival smirk the female stepped forward. She held out a jewelled hand and her eyes glittered deviously. "Ingrid, your beloved sister." Mir accepted the hand and was sharply pulled into a tight, but rigid, hug. Ingrid's lips moved beside his ear as she whispered. "You can`t trust Erin." As quickly as he'd been pulled into the cold embrace he was released and he fixed her with a steely stare, one that earned him an equally serious look in response.
He was also interested that she wasn't lying. His sister thoroughly believed that Erin was traitorous despite the scorching anger her thoughts directed to him.
He looked at the tall vampire beside her. "You must be dad." The man was still, a statue even, but he broke his stance to give his son a silent nod.
Anger pulsed in his stomach. It was meant to mean something, reuniting with his family. After three or so months, living an empty life, Mir expected the reunion would be special. He wanted… He wanted to have been missed. Yet all he'd received was icy smiles, veiled and calculating from those Erin called his family.
And how…
Vlad had been soft. Fragile like a human. Mir knew that. He knew that Vlad had been so human and so breakable but hadn't changed in the face of despair. He knew that he was the product of that despair.
But Vlad had been warm. He'd been warm in Erin's tornado thoughts and he'd been warm in the few fragments of memory Mir possessed. How could someone be so warm in the glacial family Mir stood before?
He took Erin's stiff hand. "Show me my room." It was weaker, his voice. Weaker, and singed with disappointment.
Ashen emerald eyes rippled across him, taking in his face and staring into his cerulean. Her eyes eased. Whatever mask she felt she needed to hold around his family dropped – and she led him away.
I'm going to try extra hard to get the next chapter up in no time.