"Erin, thank God you're okay!" Cheyenne's shaky voice rang out close to her ear as Erin's eyelids fluttered. She flicked her eyes open to look at the transforming vampire and immediately regretted it. Pain rippled from a point at the top of her forehead and she remembered it as the place the vampire had hit her.
"Where's Mir?" She muttered groggily.
"I don't know, but you're bleeding!" Cheyenne pressed the sleeve of her cardigan to a deep cut on Erin's cheek. The vampire immediately shuffled back.
"What are you doing?" She snapped. The newly turned half-fang actually looked hurt.
"I'm helping you-" They both stopped speaking at the clang of a nearby door.
Cheyenne seemed to insist that Erin take her cardigan, so the vampire did and winced as she applied pressure to her bleeding face. She'd been in the training room when they'd attacked – checking over the newly turned half-fang when Mir wasn't around but then the vampire had attacking from behind. She guessed she should've been glad that it hadn't been a sword he'd hit her with and only a mace.
Only a mace. It registered to Erin that she shouldn't be glad she was hit with a piece of medieval weaponry.
The door to the room they were in opened and Ingrid slunk in. She had a towel pressed to her bleeding neck and a bottle of blood in her hands. But she wasn't a prisoner – she was on the wrong side of the cage.
Erin wasn't even shocked. "You betrayed us?" She sighed. "Never mind, of course you did." Her eyes were drawn to the vampire's injury. "Who did that? Mir?" Ingrid glared at her and adjusted the material on her throat.
"Yes."
"So he made it out?"
"No." The elder Dracula smiled. "He's about to be executed. I thought I'd come and break the news."
Immediately Erin glanced towards Cheyenne. She expected the half-fang to shriek and wail. The new-vampire had barely reacted. Cheyenne looked calmly at Ingrid and then at Erin who's eyes were narrowed and confused.
"Are you okay?" Cheyenne asked her.
"Am I okay? She-" Erin gestured rudely in Ingrid's direction, "-just told us that your boyfriend is about to be murdered." She didn't mention how scared the thought made her. Mir had just found a place in her heart again, she'd started to care about him and now… "He could already be dead. You shouldn't be okay."
While Erin and Cheyenne were trapped together, Mir was in a cell alone.
They really had taken every precaution. The two vampires that he now remembered as Phaelyss and Valtov had him bound in argentalium chains, placed holy symbols at door, and Mir was even sure that there was a circuit of running water around his prison.
Absolutely impenetrable to escape.
But Mir had an idea. Phaelyss. The vampire was… suggestible. And if he was like every other vampire, he wouldn't say no to the offer of power.
All he had do to was wait.
He was not awake for long before someone came to him, and as he'd hoped; it was Phaelyss. The tall vampire slipped into his cell, halting the water circuit and stopping out of reach. Mir smirked up at him, leaning back with cold eyes and cool confidence. "Hello Phaelyss."
"Dracula." He responded with equal apathy but Mir sensed unease. "Ingrid said you didn't remember."
"Well Ingrid's dead now isn't she?" Ingrid probably wasn't dead – he'd done his best to make it look like he was killing her without doing so – but he didn't want them to know that. "I remember you and Valtov and I remember that you were going to have me killed."
"We were- are." Phaelyss corrected himself. The vampire was stiff, aware that he'd just shown weakness. He moved towards the door. "Your execution will be within the hour." The vampire was almost out the door when Mir stopped him.
"Don't I get a last request?" He asked innocently. The vampire scowled.
"What."
"I want you to leave my cuffs loose, then I'll kill Valtov and we can team up." The vampire was already scoffing at him so he added, "You know I have the power to kill them all."
For a second Phaelyss didn't move. Then his scowl reappeared. "You're lying. You wouldn't team up – you're too much of a breather-lover for that."
The chains clinked as Mir opened his arms and gestured to himself. "Do I look like a vampire who doesn't feed regularly? Am I the vampire you met when the slayers were bearing down on us?" His eyes glittered red. "Do I look weak?"
Grudgingly Phaelyss shook his head.
"Then you'll work with me?"
He could see the little cogs whirring in the vampire's equally little brain. Phaelyss glanced behind him at the door. He leaned close to Mir. Not close enough to be grabbed unfortunately because Mir so longed to smash the vampire's face into the stone floor until he didn't have a face. The soon-to-be-traitor muttered. "Your word that you won't leave me for dead?"
"I swear on the name of Dracula that I won't betray you."
"Fine. When the time comes I'll help you." The vampire reached the door and switched the water circuit back on. "But I am no lackey."
That's what you think. The heavy door clanged shut and Mir was left alone again.
Vlad had been patient. Mir certainly was not. By the time Phaelyss returned for his so-called excecution he was metaphorically climbing the walls. The chains had chaffed his wrists from his constant fidgeting and he'd actually started gnawing on his lips to the point where he tasted blood. "Good Lucifer," He snarled when at least five guards hauled him up from his cell, "I thought I was actually going to die of boredom before you killed me."
As they agreed, Phaelyss left the cuffs loose. The guards walked him down the corridors and for the briefest of moments, Mir felt a trace of unease. He'd been forced to tap into Vlad's memories for this plan and it would all go to pot if he couldn't follow through. Vlad had the power and the knowledge. Mir had the cunning and the depravity for it.
They reached a cavernous room and he realised with a snort of laughter that the council were holed up in an old church. What irony.
There was a long table at the end with several elegant chairs and severe vampires seated in them and finally a central throne. Valtov sat on it, his eyebrows pulled so low to his eyes that he resembled a furious owl. Mir let out another snigger. This was the man who'd replaced him as Grand High Vampire?
"Silence!" The acting-sovereign of the vampires stood and Mir was shoved to his knees, painfully so. He stopped laughing but raised his eyes to Valtov's, unblinking and daring. As he did that, two half-fangs attached chains around his calves. Too late he realised and snapped at them but when he looked back to the Grand High Vampire the vampire was smiling.
"We didn't think we'd see you again, Dracula."
"Really? You stole my throne and you just expected me to run away?"
"It's what you did. It's what any half-intelligent vampire would do," Valtov chuckled. "Of course the Chosen One is exempt from both common sense and self preservation." He held an arm out and one of the half-fangs placed a sheaved weapon. The sword was released with a deadly shnnk… "And now you'll face justice for your crimes."
Mir gently tugged at the cuffs around his wrists to make sure they would come loose. They didn't. His breath caught mid-inhalation. Phaelyss had made them loose. He'd checked that much before he'd left the cell. Why weren't they loose any more!
Valtov began to approach the chained vampire, twirling the blade with glee. The two half-fangs that had tied him down returned to restrain him. Mir started struggling.
The cuffs were caught together somehow, that was the only explanation. He continued wriggling. His head was forcefully tilted to the floor, his neck exposed.
Calm footsteps came closer until he could see a pair of boots.
Mir's wrists started to throb as he dragged the cuffs in opposite directions.
He heard the sword rise into the air.
Snap.