Mir barely had his fangs in Ingrid's throat for ten seconds before he was dragged off her.
The Ingrid-esque vampire jammed his thumb and finger onto the Dracula's upper jaw, digging into the muscles that controlled fang extension until Mir was forced to pull his teeth back in and release Ingrid.
She slid from his arms and dropped to the floor, landing in a growing puddle of her own blood, spilling from the two deep punctures in her throat. Mir admired his work in the split-second he had. Ingrid would survive – but she wouldn't realise that he'd wanted that.
The impact of their furious fist sent him sprawling. It also set him laughing. He cackled as his lip split and a small fountain of blood dripped from his nose. The vampire was legitimately horrified at what he'd done to Ingrid, and it was so hilarious because it made them weak. A second punch to the face ended Mir's laughter and he growled, rising to his feet, finally ready to fight back.
"Do you really think you can take me?" He bluffed. "Just you? I have more power than you can dream of."
The vampire seemed startled. His dark eyes shot sharply to Ingrid's prone figure and he glanced back at Mir. "She said you were different." It sounded like a compliment.
"I'm better." He smirked. "So I'd turn around and go home if I were you. One vampire isn't really a match for m-"
A blow to the back of the head, almost comical in its timing, stopped him mid sentence. He toppled forward, pain blossoming at the base of his skull. He landed sideways in the blood.
As Mir's limbs failed to respond and his eyelids flickered his attacker spoke.
"Not so tough now, are you?" A kick to his side pushed the air from his lungs. Reality started to ripple "...your stake Phaelyss – before… back up!"
He distantly heard them faffing about above him and then Phaelyss spoke. "…-Ait, he's different Valtov, I think he's…"
Mir lost his battle with consciousness.
Jonno was almost impaled by his own stake as the van surfed over a particularly vicious speed bump. The slayer opposite him giggled. He glanced at her curiously.
"You need to get a sheaf," She said, lifting her own stake to show him a little leather case around it. "It's definitely worth it for the pain that it saves you." Jonno nodded and wondered why this woman was talking to him. "Why d'you look so sad? Was it something I said?"
"No, it's just…" He looked out the window and it the sky, where a brilliant white moon glittered in a navy sea. "Last time we did a raid like this it didn't go well. People died and uh-"
"Yeah," The slayer pushed springy coils of dark hair back into a ponytail. "I heard – m'name's Onika by the way. But I'm sure this raid will go better, in fact I'm positive,"
"Why?"
"I'm here, and so's Walter, and Peter and Olivia." She smirked and elbowed the slayer along from her. "Isn't that right, Olive?"
The blond gave him a tight smile and nodded. "We're more prepared this time." Her hand was curled around a large UV rifle.
"I'm uh Jonno, Va-"
"Jonno Van Helsing," Onika smiled. "I know who you are Jonno, I'm pretty sure the entire guild knows who you are." She didn't say it negatively but the slayer shifted awkwardly anyway.
"Oh."
"That's not a bad thing, I mean – you single handedly took down the vampires' leader."
"You know we're going on this mission because he's alive, right?" Jonno ached to see the vampire again – to finish Mir. The pain in his neck wouldn't let him forget what a vicious monster Vlad had become. "And he survived being shot with the Argent pistol."
One of the men closer to the front of the van piped up. "We've got a hand-held prototype UV cannon with us – the blood sucker might be bullet resistant but he can't beat the light of day," He tapped the crate by his boots.
The repertoire between the inhabitants of the van was easier, easier than Jonno was used to. Onika exchanged comments with the other members of the raid-team effortlessly and they didn't all look at him like he was some sort of pariah. The slayer opposite him caught his stares.
"You need to chill," She told him. "We're your team for tonight, we're all good people and you have to be able to trust us."
The man with the UV cannon reached down and slapped Jonno's leg. "Onika's right. We've got your back."
He nodded back, unsure of how he could have missed this kind group of people among everyone else at the guild. It was regretful that he'd meet them just as they were about to burst into a vampire lair and risk their lives.
When they stopped just outside the school's walls Jonno realised why the group he was with were so closely knit and so unfamiliar. They were the elite. Specifically bought over to Lancashire to deal with the vampire problem. Their leader, a man with a husky voice, by the name of Charlie Francis gave them their orders.
"Olivia and Peter will take the front door, Peter will deploy the UV cannon in the lobby and hold the fort there." The pair nodded. "Jonno and Onika, I want you to go through the back, straight for the vampire's quarters and dust anyone there," Charlie turned to the last members of the group. "Me and Walter will go through the kitchens. Everyone's watches synchronised?"
He received five nods. "Okay. Get in position, maintain radio silence. We go in at 0020 hours."
Jonno tightened his grip on his weapon, a econmically sized UV pistol and followed Onika to the student entrance. They both remained utterly silent, with only glances between one another to communicate where to stop. Just her grip around her weapon and her stillness told Jonno that the team he was with were truly pros.
The seconds ticked on while the night's wind finally wormed itself into Jonno's uniform. His partner's fingers brushed his shoulder and she indicated her watch. She was crouched, catlike behind him, a UV baton thrumming in her hand. She didn't look afraid in the slightest. Unlike Jonno she hadn't spent the last few hours fretting about the outcome of this mission, perhaps she hadn't even acknowledged what was at risk. Perhaps that was why she could keep it together.
"Go, go, go," She hissed and Jonno pushed the door open, kicking the remains of it's padlock out the way. They were in.
The school was dead, as a school should be in the middle of the night. However this was a school where vampires lived and night was the most active time for a vampire. Except Vlad, but it wasn't Vlad they were hunting – they were hunting Mir.
Jonno and Onika slipped through the corridors like ghosts. Their flickering weaponry was the only thing that separated their silhouettes from the dark. There was something distinctly haunting about a school at night, and the fear that a vampire could leap out from behind any corner did nothing to stop this feeling.
They didn't take the most direct route – Peter and Olivia were the distraction and they needed to be away from any passages to the lobby. Their job was to clear the vamp's man quarters, search them, kill stragglers and join the inevitable fray in the main entrance. He could already hear shots ringing off below as the first team shot up the school. Jonno stopped at the staircase to the Dracula quarters and powered up his weapon, nodding at Onika to do the same. She grimly fired up a pistol and a baton, one in each hand.
The staircase wasn't lit, and it creaked noisily with each footstep. It was a wonder none of the Dracula's had come to investigate. He hoped someone would, Ingrid perhaps, so he could get it out the way fast and not deal with any residual guilt until after the mission. It was shameful, knowing that he would feel guilt for killing a vampire. But he'd grown up with these vampires and… well, he was weak.
Onika had overtaken him. She reached the top of the stairs first and silently pushed the attic door open.
The long hallway that Jonno knew connected to each and every one of the Dracula rooms was as pitch black as the rest of the house. They weren't there. Even with fantastic night vision, vampires were not keen to sit in silence.
The two slayers exchanged looks. Even if the vampires had headed to the distraction downstairs they wouldn't have left their rooms pitch black. Jonno crept towards the room that he knew was Vlad's.
Empty. There was no one here. Giving up stealth, Jonno removed his night vision goggles and encouraged Onika to do the same, then he switched the light on.
There was a bulging rucksack on the sofa and a metal casket in the centre of the room. Onika frowned. "A vampire would sleep in that?" She kicked the lid and the loud catches flapped with the movement.
It was so very Vlad. The two slayers slipped into the room fully and began to search. Onika started with the wardrobe while Jonno picked at the objects littered about the floor. It felt like he was invading the vampire's space.
A canvas painting was propped face down against the wall. Jonno retrieved it with more care than necessary. It was the Dracula family, immortalised (for the second time) in paint. The art style was faintly familiar, he realised, and then noticed the faint signature at the bottom.
Robin Branaugh.
The last Jonno had heard of him, he'd been joining a local art school with no memory of vampires and only the knowledge of Vlad's name instead of the two years they'd been inseparable. He sighed; at least one of them was out of this life.
"What's that?" Onika pulled away from her side of the room and pointed at some dark marks on the side of the painting.
"I don't know," He slid his fingers across and onto them. They fitted the pads of his fingers. "Angry vampire looks at this? Starts forming a fireball? They look like they could be burns." Vlad would certainly be capable of it.
"Vampires have strange-looking families." Onika said. Jonno agreed. The picture had captured the personalities of the Dracula's well, from Vlad's bright clothing, right down to the tense distance between all of the subjects. Jonno put it back on the floor.
"Yeah. Did you find anything?"
She shook her head. "Nah, or not anything useful at least."
"Do you want to check the other rooms?" Jonno asked. The elite slayer thought about for a moment and checked her pockets.
"Check the others – not as thoroughly – just in case there's a vampire lurking but then I think we have an opportunity so do something..." She opened her palm to reveal a bundle of miniature speakers.
"Screamers?" Screamers were guild-slang for an audio weapon they could attach to walls. It emitted a high pitch sound that was impossible for humans to hear. But for vampires… Creatures that had hearing as good as a bat's were crippled by the shriek. Jonno had seen half-fangs bleed from their ears when exposed to it for long and at the right intensity it could immediately render a vampire unconscious.
"If they're not here, we can go one better than kill them – we capture them."
"You don't think they're downstairs?"
"Charlie would be squawking through the radio if they had."
Jonno nodded. "So search the rooms, set them on the walls?"
"Be subtle – you know how good their eyes are. Then regroup at the stairs and we'll meet up with the others.
As expected, the Dracula quarters were empty of all vampires and when they reached the lobby it was obvious that the rest of the team had shared a similar lack of action.
"Not even one?" Peter was saying as they passed through the doors. He was sat on a fully assembled UV cannon, miserably removing pulse units from a hatch on the side. "Astrid is going to be so disappointed that we didn't get to activate it."
Onika hurried ahead and leaned over the balcony. "No vampires?"
"None." Charlie's coarse voice rumbled below. "But we've got this one."
The one thing they had found was Renfield. He didn't seem very happy to see Jonno.
"Oh so you did come for me!" The servant barked. "Couldn't leave the Dracula's secret weapon to his own devices!"
Jonno frowned and his eyes landed on Olivia, the slayer with a weapon lazily poised on Renfield. She looked thoroughly bored and her weapon was drooping. As the servant spoke she rolled her eyes and he wondered if they might just disappear into the back of her head. "We found him in a cupboard," She informed him. "Apparently the vampire shoved him in there when he realised someone was coming for them. This one thought it was us, and this is the second sweep."
"Do we know who got here first?"
"No, but there was a struggle." The slayer gestured at a pool of dark blood near the far wall. "It's vampire blood but we don't know if the vampire was incapacitated or not and we don't know if their attackers intended to kill. It seems like they weren't."
Jonno nodded and then turned to Renfield. "Which vampire pushed you in a cupboard?" He demanded.
Onika cut in. "What does it matter?"
"I want to know, was it Vlad?"
The servant nodded, and Olivia unlocked his cuffs. "Go on," She said. "Scram!" Renfield immediately hurried up the stairs and vanished. "We'll cut him loose and we'll take them all in when the vampires return.
Onika poked Jonno in the shoulder. "Why did you want to know about the cupboard? It's not important."
It was important, because if it was Vlad that meant he'd tried to protect someone else. It meant that there was a chance that the moral side of the vampire wasn't lost. It meant… Jonno wondered why he was even supporting this… It meant that there was a chance at peace.