I have had my heart crushed ruthlessly by How To Train Your Dragon 3 since the last chapter of this was done!
Also, I am so glad for the love for Ingrid's breather family! I often feel like Sally and George didn't get enough love in S5, I'm glad they are getting it now!
-YD-
"Another one off the list."
Vlad dragged his pen across the name, having just confirmed through a slightly peculiar report in a Slayers Newsletter (his father liked to collect them) that the two male vampires in question from that clan were in the country, but a couple of hundred miles away from Whitby that entire month, engaging in a turf war with a particularly crotchety group of Slayers.
It wasn't particularly easy to actually pay attention, since Ingrid was complaining it was hot and had shed her shirt, unbuttoned her dress. He supposed it was a warm day, and her skin was ever-colder, but still. Half-naked Ingrid was not conducive to focusing attention elsehwere. And, judging by the way a smirk tugged the side of her mouth whenever she caught Vlad's eyes stray toward her, she damned well knew it.
"Is your dad still awake? I want to see this Blood Mirror."
Vlad strained his hearing - not as acute as when he became a full vampire, but still more than the average humans - and heard a crash down in the kitchen.
"Yeah. But if he's up this early" Vlad glanced at his watch "he'll go out hunting when it gets dark enough. So if you can wait that long, we can do that this evening. If not, then you'll just have to come over again, but earlier while he's still asleep."
With Sally's knowledge of some form of budding relationship between the two teens, she'd apparently tried to give Ingrid 'the talk', and Vlad had paid for it with a rather violent (although admittedly enjoyable) greeting when Ingrid got to the castle. Even so, she'd been more mindful about where she bit him now somebody was looking, so Vlad no longer had to worry about explaining the bruises pulsing low along his collarbone to anybody.
"What does Branagh think of you spending less time at his place now?"
Was Ingrid... making normal conversation? Her mood must have improved.
"He did ask about it, but I blamed it on my dad demanding more Blood Test studying before my birthday or else I couldn't have a cake. After the dramatics of the last time, he understands that. And technically, I'm not lying. All this has been good studying for the history section of the Test."
Ingrid nodded to herself, frowning as she lifted a Slayers Newsletter to her face and sniffed it.
"Garlic paper?"
"They spray it with garlic to deter vamps. Dad makes Renfield pick them up."
"Not much of a system."
Vlad shrugged.
"Modern Slayers are a strange mix of brilliant and idiots. They've invented weapons that harness pure UV energy, developed something as useful to them as argentalium - that's an alloy of silver and garlic, making it effective against biters and werewolves alike - and even set up their own website to buy and sell weapons. But a lot of their training is on paper only, and so there's a lot of bookworm types who can barely raise a stake to a biter being sent out with information vamps would love, and barely knowing how to use any of their high tech weaponry."
"So they don't even have to slay to qualify?"
Vlad shook his head.
"Nope. Although I heard that might change. Possibly because they realise how stupid it was to let so many out untrained. Recruitment is down, but that's partially down to the fact slaying is usually a family affair and the last generation didn't do a lot of surviving long enough to procreate. So if there's a surge, we'll pay for it in vampire population."
Ingrid cocked her head slightly, surveying Vlad strangely.
"What?"
"You... you talk about hating the prospect of becoming a vampire, but you know so much about it, you think it through a lot more than anyone who is completely against it should."
Vlad frowned.
"I want change. I don't want to grow up in the same war-based bloodbath every previous generation has done. The more I know, the better prepared I am for peace."
"Peace?"
"Yes. I want to find a way that vampires and brea- humans can live together in peace. You are proof that we're not so different."
Ingrid didn't look sold, but Vlad had gone on more than he intended to anyway. She wanted answers about her future change, not vampire politics.
He saw her off before his father had gone out hunting, the buzzing alert of her mobile phone a request from her mother to get home soon - didn't Ingrid know it wasn't safe to be outside at night? Vlad and she shared something of a laugh about that.
"My dad is the reason it's not safe. So, tomorrow?"
"I'll try and get over here earlier."
Ingrid kissed him goodbye, leaving Vlad a little dizzy before she slipped away into the evening, Vlad reluctantly heading up to his room again to work on Stokely Grammar homework for once. He kept accidentally writing vampire references that were scribbled out, his brain crammed full of them, until his work resembled a heavily corrected version of Robin's. Minus the bat doodles around the margins of the paper.
Shoving the essay aside as a bad job but knowing he'd hand it in anyway, Vlad laid down on his bed with a groan, Ingrid's scent seeming infused into his sheets, sticking to his skin like the bruises she left behind. Blood, she was addictive. Drawing in a few breaths, heavy with her perfume, her pheromones and that uniquely Ingrid scent that was neither vampire nor human but something altogether different.
True to her word, Ingrid was over the next day before the sun was even at it's highest point, and Vlad knew his father had retired to his coffin only a couple of hours ago. So long as they dodged Renfield, there was nothing between them and the Blood Mirror.
"Come on, while the coast is clear."
Well, that was if Vlad didn't count Ingrid shoving him into the first room they found along the way, empty save for a couple of dusty tables and chairs - storage, spares for when the Count set fire to the furniture as he was want to do. He barely had time to process before her mouth was on his, her hand down his trousers. Vlad knew arousal magnified someones scent, even more so if said someone still had a pulse, and Ingrid had something of a fascination with it, cupping and squeezing him as she inhaled at his throat. It was strange and thrilling all at once, and though he was getting better Vlad still had the stamina of a teenage boy being groped by a walking wet dream.
Ingrid grimaced as she withdrew her hand, Vlad's flushed cheeks burning hotter seeing the mess and searching for something to wipe it on. Vlad volunteered his overshirt, skin so warmed he didn't feel he needed it even in the drafty lower corridors now. Tossing it aside to deal with later, Vlad led Ingrid down the various twists and turns, eventually feeling that ominous chill that meant they'd reached the lower levels of the castle.
"Hang on a sec, I want to check dad hasn't booby-trapped it since he showed it to me before."
"Are you not meant to see it or something?"
"He's paranoid about it. I don't really know why. I wouldn't smash it, it would kill him."
Vlad slipped through the doors, eyes flicking around the room as he circled the Mirror, satisfied nothing had been altered since he last saw it. He felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up as a soft whisper seemed to hum through the air, though when Vlad turned, he saw nothing different. The castle played tricks sometimes, so he dismissed the feeling. Standing in front of the Mirror, Vlad observed his reflection, wondering how one day this ornate rectangle would change him so completely and whether or not he'd come out of it still himself. His reflection winked, seemed to shake its head before settling into his mirror image again.
Turning to the door, Vlad called out.
"Alright, you can come in."
-YD-
What could possibly go wrong...