Part two of this ridiculously long piece of random. Enjoy! Oh, and redrachxo: I still expect a proper review for EACH chapter :P I'm demanding like that. Hopefully you'll feel this fic is worth it.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything except apparently a bizarre addiction to vampirising fairytales.
Vlad collapsed into his coffin with a sigh. After the previous day's weirdness, Du Fortunesa – Bertrand, he reminded himself – had made no mention of their aborted dinner and had focused instead on combat training, as well as making Vlad prove that he really could use telekinesis as well as he'd seemed to the day before. Vlad was exhausted, and he'd been promised there was more of the same to follow. Bertrand seemed determined to work him to death, and he wasn't really sure why.
Vlad was determined to make his tutor proud, and he wasn't really sure why that was either.
The monster felt a little guilty. That was a new experience; usually he veered between being a remorseless beast and being completely crippled with regret for his own actions. Still, he'd worked Vlad rather hard over the few nights since that awkward conversation about names, and the boy was probably wondering what he'd done wrong. He wracked his brain for a way to make it up to him.
Eventually, he settled on an idea. If he timed his flight right at dusk, he could just about pull it off. Thus decided, the monster settled in his shroud to sleep.
Vlad woke late, opening his eyes to find that darkness had already fallen outside. He grabbed his walkie-talkie, though his telepathy was gradually improving, and ventured out to find his tutor. He met him in the hallway, coming the other way, and by midnight he was aching from practicing a series of complicated martial arts moves. Bertrand surprised him then, handing him a bottle of soy and heading for a room Vlad had never been into.
"I've got something for you." Vlad's mind went into overdrive, wondering what diabolical training scheme he was about to walk into the middle of, trying to figure out how Bertrand expected him to use a bottle of soy blood as a weapon. What he wasn't expecting was for Bertrand to push open the door and reveal a television and a mismatched selection of armchairs. "This room, everything in it… is yours."
"What… Why?" Vlad was stunned by the gesture; the television was clearly new and appeared to be hooked up to some kind of wind-powered generator, because the rest of the castle certainly didn't get electricity. The chairs looked like they'd been scavenged from other rooms, but it was clear he was being offered a variety of options to suit any tastes.
"You've worked hard, you deserved something nice." Bertrand's face suddenly darkened and Vlad felt the snap coming before it did. "Is there something wrong with that?" Vlad moved as if to place his hand on Bertrand's arm, a small gesture of reassurance that only made him tense up further. He withdrew his hand quickly.
"It's lovely. Thank you." Bertrand nodded sharply, taking an abrupt step towards the door.
"The rest of the night is yours. Get some rest. You'll need it for tomorrow."
The monster turned to leave, but Vlad's voice stopped him.
"Bertrand… if you want to join me, whenever… that would be… I'd like that." He didn't reply, making straight for his Blood Cellar. Soon the boy would discover that he could get Fang!TV, which had taken to running near-constant news about the Dracula family since their son's apparent disappearance. He would have no time for the monster then, too busy longing for home.
Still, when he tapped on the door a few hours later, goblet of blood in hand, Vlad answered cheerfully.
"It's your castle, you can come in." The moment the door was opened, he gestured towards an empty seat, and the monster lowered himself into it, a little shy in this new situation. The boy had indeed found Fang!TV, but he began talking over the broadcast, even turning the sound off so he could tell the monster all about his family. Didn't he know he was giving him ammunition, weapons that would make it laughably easy to take the Draculas down?
He had no intention of using that information to do so, however. The monster simply sat and listened as the boy spoke fondly of home, until the sun began to rise and Vlad began to yawn.
A few nights passed uneventfully, Bertrand working him hard before releasing him or inviting him to dine. The tutor wasn't nearly as unbearable as Vlad had expected; a little abrupt, perhaps, and prone to sudden bursts of anger, but almost… considerate. It seemed as though he didn't know how to be nice, but Vlad didn't think he was a bad person. Then he remembered the stories, the tales of the vampire clans wiped out for daring to cross Du Fortunesa, and he wondered how they could possibly be talking about the same vampire.
One night, Vlad woke early, before the sun could sink below the horizon. He suspected Bertrand wouldn't be awake yet, and he didn't want to go and get hooked on the television broadcasts before what he was sure would be another gruelling day of training. What better time, he reasoned, to explore the castle? Bertrand had said he could go anywhere, after all. Well, except for those two rooms; one, he'd since learnt, was where the older vampire slept, but the other remained a mystery. Still, there were plenty of other rooms to explore – there was no need to break his word to the other vampire.
Most of the other rooms, Vlad discovered, were empty and boring. It was as if Bertrand hadn't really bothered to make the place homely; he'd just filled it with the few things he required to be comfortable and gone on with his existence. There was a huge, dusty library, which Vlad thought he might ask about later, and a room he was already familiar with that was used for physical training, but apart from that there was no indication of what Bertrand might have done to amuse himself before Vlad's arrival.
He found himself, as the last rays of sunlight slipped below the horizon, standing outside the forbidden door once again. He remembered Bertrand's hand pausing inches from the handle, the way he'd moved on as if there was something he ought to do, but couldn't. He knew Bertrand probably thought him unobservant, but he wasn't blind. He hesitated, hand outstretched; he had about half an hour, judging by Bertrand's previous behaviour, before his tutor would be awake and expecting him to work. That was more than enough time to take a peek inside the room and get back to his coffin. Still, he hesitated… and then he reasoned that if Bertrand had really wanted to keep him out, he would have locked the door. He tried it; it swung open and before he could think better of it, he had stepped inside and closed the door behind him.
He didn't understand what was so different about this room; there was a small cabinet against the far wall, carved of a dark wood, and large trunks of a similar colour pushed up against the edges of the room. He lifted the nearest lid, curious, and found a collection of mementos from various events of the last four centuries. This, then, was where Bertrand stored his past.
In the very centre of the room, however, stood a large mahogany stand with an ancient-looking book resting on it. Vlad wondered if perhaps it was Bertrand's journal. Curious as he was, he had no intention of opening such a volume; Bertrand, like any other vampire on the planet, was entitled to his privacy and his secrets. He did, however, draw closer, curious to see if there was a title on the cover before he left the room. He reached out – and the skeletal hand holding the book shut jolted into life, pointing one bony finger accusingly at the young vampire. Then a bolt of lightning shot out and hit him, and Vlad stumbled backwards, yelling out in surprise and pain.
The monster dropped his razor; that was Vlad's voice. Why would he be yelling like that? The boy's unguarded mind provided the answer. He was in the room, the room with the Book and untold other dangerous objects. But why? Hadn't the monster warned him to leave it alone? What was he doing in that room in the first place?
The monster bolted across the hall, relieved that he had chosen a room so close by for himself.
The first Vlad knew of Bertrand's presence in the room was that strong arms were pulling him backwards, away from the book and out of the door.
"Did you open the cabinet?" Vlad frowned, blinked, shook his head; the world was fuzzy.
"No, the book zapped me, that's all – Bertrand, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have-"
"No, you shouldn't have! I gave you free reign, I gave you everything I could, and you disobeyed me. One rule, Vladimir Dracula, and you broke it!" He dragged him along the corridor by his arm and threw him into his coffin room, producing a key Vlad wasn't aware he had. "Stay in there until you've come to your senses!"
Vlad tried to apologise, talking to the door with no idea if Bertrand was on the other side. He even tried using the walkie-talkie, but after a few minutes of stammered apologies he realised that Bertrand had jammed the talk button, effectively muting his prisoner. He'd messed things up, he knew, and Bertrand had every right to be angry with him.
He'd have felt bad, under any other circumstances, for waking the other vampire; the dusting of stubble on his face betrayed the fact that he hadn't even had time to shave before Vlad had brought him running, and Vlad had never seen Bertrand anything less than perfectly put-together. Today, though, his appearance had been wild; he'd run to defend the book, which seemed more than capable of defending itself, and now he was furious with him. The fact he'd been woken up was irrelevant; Vlad had betrayed his trust, just when he was beginning to think that this captivity thing might be bearable after all.
He lay in his coffin, crossed his arms over himself, and stared miserably at the ceiling until, hours later, he fell asleep.
The monster fumed; he had done his best to protect the Dracula child, going against every rule he'd ever made for himself, jeopardising his own job and his own safety – even his own unlife – and the ungrateful boy had gone against his orders anyway. Didn't he know he could have been killed? If he'd opened the cabinet at the back of the room instead of going for the Book… the monster didn't want to think about it.
This surprised him; he'd slain enough would-be Chosen Ones himself for being unable to activate the Book; why would he care if this foolish boy got his hands on the Crown and died for his folly? The monster should, in fact, have forced him to face the Book by now, to test his claim, but he'd decided to keep him for a little longer, if only as an extra voice around the place.
What he didn't understand was why the boy had been making so much noise in the first place. Had he wanted the monster to find him? He could have killed him, even if the dangerous artefacts in the room hadn't. He closed his eyes, trying to picture the scene he'd burst in on. He'd mostly been focused on manhandling Vlad back through the door, but now he thought about it, the Book had lifted one of its bony fingers and was pointing straight at the boy. His eyes flew open.
The Book had responded. Perhaps – no, the monster didn't dare to hope – Vlad couldn't be the true Chosen One. The monster didn't have that kind of luck; he didn't deserve it.
When Vlad woke up, there were a few bottles of soy blood on his bookcase. He took this as a sign that he was going to be locked in for a few days. Still, it could have been worse; he could have been left to starve. He sat bolt upright, a sudden realisation filling him with horror. If Du Fortunesa had come into his room while he was sleeping – and the bottles made it fairly clear that he had – he could just as easily have been staked. He was surprised he hadn't been - after all, wasn't that what Du Fortunesa was famous for, his ruthlessness?
He curled up against the door with a bottle of soy and tried to work out why he was still undead.
Two days later, he still hadn't worked it out, but he hoped that Du Fortunesa – Bertrand – would have calmed down by now, enough to hear him out at least.
Bertrand? I'm sorry. I'm really sorry. I shouldn't have gone in there. Please don't hate me. The walkie-talkie crackled into life from the floor by the bookcase.
"Hate you?" He sounded confused again. No, not confused, that couldn't be right. "I don't…" Vlad grabbed the radio, depressing the talk button.
"I wouldn't blame you. I was wrong, I'm sorry, but… can we talk? I still don't know what happened." There was no answer, just the sound of the key turning in the door. When Vlad opened it, he saw Bertrand already stalking away in the direction of the dining room and rushed to catch up.
"What was that book, what did it…?" They were sitting opposite one another, goblets of their different types of blood between them, and Bertrand looked as stern as ever. When he spoke, however, it was in the matter of fact tone of voice he used when they trained.
"That was the Praedictum Impaver. As for what did it, you might have to tell me what happened in there." Vlad stared down at the table, suddenly fascinated by the knots in the wood.
"I… I wasn't going to open it, I swear, I just… reached out to touch it and it zapped me. With its finger." Some of the tension Vlad hadn't noticed in his tutor's shoulders fell away.
"You're the real… Well, you've passed the first test at any rate." Vlad looked up at him, surprised.
"That's good, right?" Bertrand nodded, still frowning, and he decided to press his advantage. "So what is it? Why does it have a hand? And why does it only have four fingers? Well, three and a thumb."
Bertrand explained the legend of the Praedictum Impaver – that it had once been a powerful but insane vampire, and would confer even greater powers on the person it recognised as the Chosen One – but he didn't answer the question about the fingers. Perhaps he couldn't. Vlad didn't push it; he suspected his tutor didn't like having to admit that he didn't know things, or perhaps it was the not knowing itself that he resented. At any rate, he let the subject drop.
"It's ten o'clock, do you want to train tonight?" The older vampire looked surprised, but nodded.
Bertrand froze for a second, the momentary hesitation enough to allow Vlad to finally get the upper hand. He'd never managed it before, and he felt a certain sense of triumph as he pinned his tutor to the floor. Did this count as defeating the legendary Du Fortunesa? The older vampire looked just as stunned as he felt, staring up at him, and Vlad almost apologised before standing and reaching out a hand to help the other man up. That, if anything, seemed to bewilder him more, but he accepted the help.
Vlad smiled at him, holding on a little longer than he really needed to. He'd never really touched his tutor before, outside of the context of throwing each other across rooms. He'd almost been expecting scales or some kind of toxin in his skin… but Bertrand's hand was rough, worn… somehow still softer than he'd expected. His tutor, for his part, stared stupidly down at the point of contact before abruptly pulling away and speaking gruffly.
"Good. You're learning." Then he turned and swept from the room.
The monster stalked up to his own room and slammed the door behind him. He needed room to think. Sliding down against the door, he stared curiously at his own hand, wondering why it still felt as if it was tingling, as if it still had another cold, pale hand running over it.
It had been years since someone had reached out and touched him. He'd grabbed people, of course, and he'd thrown Vlad about a fair bit in training, but nobody had offered him a hand in kindness for… well, centuries.
It felt… good. The monster glanced up at the hourglass and turned his face away.
