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Fantasy St. George's School for Young Hunters (closed)

Winona figured that was probably as much permission as she was going to get- It seemed pretty unlikely she even could make Jurriaan angry enough to actually kill her.

He might definitely /want/ to, but he would wait until Vlad or Bram or both could watch. There was no way he was passing up an opportunity like that.

The silver chain was more of a leash than proper handcuffs, and the goon holding it had eased his grip on it in accordance to how green his face was. Winona pushed her wrists apart quickly to add the slack to her range of motion, reaching inside her jacket to pull out the gun she had stolen.

“Shit, she’s got a gun-” he exclaimed, but Winona had already turned away and swung the gun up and over the guy on her other side, yanking the chain out of the first one’s grasp.

She fired twice down through the seat at the rear passenger wheel, and only managed turn and get one shot off at the rear driver wheel before they’d managed to subdue her- But the damage was already done.

The tires were dead weight, and based on the way they swerved, they’d hit a significant enough rock on the right side that the rim was caught. Also she’d kicked one of the men’s nose so hard it looked like it might be broken.

“I said: I didn’t want to go back,” Winona repeated evenly, staring down the rearview mirror even as she was restrained.






“Maybe make it five,” Alex warned because he was really not down with ‘fast and loose’ when it came to time-tables of ‘May potentially being in danger’. Maybe make it five, like three minutes ago, but he resisted adding that. Because he was completely calm.

So calm.

He also didn't add that Luka was probably a much better shot than he himself was. Because he was confident in himself regardless. Somewhat.
 
Jurriaan swore. They had one job. Just the one. Make sure the half-vampire did not cause problems. And what did she have? A gun. Considering he was not carrying a gun and she had not previously been carrying a gun, there was only one place she could have gotten it.

He remained in control of the vehicle as it swerved perilously on the mountain road before bringing it to a stop. Ignoring Winona, he got out and eyed the back tires. They were shot—literally—and would not be carrying them to the castle.

Jurriaan felt something wet and cold and looked up. It had begun snowing. He stared upwards for a few minutes. Now was not a time to be losing his temper.

He checked his phone. At least not everyone was incompetent.

But here, he had to do everything himself. Jurriaan yanked the door open and actually dragged the bloodied goon out. He then grabbed Winona’s coat and dragged her out. He began marching down the road, dragging her along.

“You’re a tool, remember?” He hissed in her ear. “You don’t have wants. You are used, and then you are discarded. That’s how tools work.”





Between Winona running off and getting herself captured and May doing crazy things he was not sure would work, Vlad needed a vacation. Or, a castle stay-cation. Everyone else could just leave and he could read books for a week. But no, he would return home to find Alex tied to a chair while the others rode mattresses down the stairs and ate only ice cream and Bram remembered his argument about legal drinking ages.

“I can shoot targets far smaller than you,” Luka assured May evenly over the group call. “If I did, it would not be an accident.”

“Sorry,” came Rue’s voice, “I guess I forgot to mention Bram added us.” She then hissed something to her cousin in the Roma tongue, which sounded like it was along the lines of, “Don’t be so creepy!”

“What’s our ETA, Vlad?” Bram asked. “If I have to wait much longer, I might jump off this wall.”

“You will only succeed in breaking your legs and irritating me,” Vlad said. “And longer, now. Winona bought us some time. They are on foot.”




They had been wandering around for hours. For days, really. Their fearless leader thought that if enough people went looking, someone was bound to find the Castle Drakonii. So far, he had been wrong. Don’t follow the lights, yes, but it was not as if that meant they had a clear path. And marking the trees didn’t work. The basted foliage seemed to discard their marks—magic, or otherwise. They had been attacked by wolves, deer, and even an enterprising rabbit that they were quite certain was a vampire. There was also something that looked half-monkey, half-wolf that had bitten a chunk out of one of the smaller men’s legs. They hadn’t seen it clearly, and no one else believed them it was anything but a wolf.

They had thought that numbers would help them conquer the castle’s defenses, but despite their numbers, they had failed.

At least, right until the castle suddenly appeared out of nowhere. The lights disappeared, and the wolves hunting them fell back. It was a miracle, and they all guessed that their fearless leader had defeated the land’s vampire magic.

One group had been nearly on the doorstep and had had to restrain themselves from crashing up the mountain to it. As it was, they had crept up quietly and were now watching the castle from the tree line. As the castle was magically hidden on a mountain, it did not require miles of clearing around it—just a hundred yards of bare ground. From the tree line, they could see two people on the wall. Where the others were, they didn’t know, but it was obvious the castle was expecting visitors.

Then, the gate creaked open and that mage came out. They would have left him alone so as not to alert suspicion, but he was getting too close to their hiding spot for comfort. They all looked to the designated squad leader, and she gave a firm nod. Just as May was passing, one of the bigger men jumped out and grabbed him, quickly clapping a hand over his mouth.

“One word from you, and I’ll have my companion shoot those two on the wall.”

They didn’t actually have any long-range guns, but he doubted May knew that.
 
Ok, in and out, super quick. Or rather, out and in again, but the point was speed. May could do speed.

Luka’s addition to the conversation made May squeak, and then chuckle nervously, because really, he did not think that the other man could actually /hear/ him. His face was flushed in embarrassment as he tried to laugh it off.

He slipped his phone into his pocket the way that he said he would, and it was a good thing too because not a few moments later he was being grabbed.

He squeaked in alarm as he was manhandled, his heart pounding. So they did have snipers in the forest, after all. It was a good thing he had gone to establish a proper perimeter, or he never would have known. Of course, none of that helped him right now, because he was being held captive and they were threatening to shoot his friends. Nervously, he drew two fingers across his lips as though zipping them shut to show his cooperation on the not talking thing.
 
Winona did not appreciate him getting so close to her face, and she hissed back before twisting towards him and snapping angrily with her mouth. She didn’t catch any skin of course, but she still enjoyed threatening him with her teeth, as she imagined he had particular objections about that part of her utility.

“/You/ don’t listen well,” she accused him back, keeping pace enough with him to avoid tripping but not exactly hurrying along. “Prolly why they all keep leaving you, hmm?”

The snow- Natural or you, she asked Vlad.





“How’d she do that- No wait, never mind,” Alex said, deciding he didn’t want to know. She had probably killed a man, or cut her own arm off or something that he was not equipped to worry about at the moment.

He didn’t bother scolding Bram- Vlad had summed up the consequences of such an action pretty succinctly. “Besides, more time is good, May can use it,” he pointed out.

May was moving pretty quickly- even if Alex would have preferred quicker- and Alex flinched every time he went down a small rise in the earth or passed behind a tree, and Alex could no longer see him. But he always reappeared a few seconds later, so Alex should just relax. Both he and Luka were tracking the mage, and scanning the forest for any movement.

It would be fine.

Except… May had passed out of sight for more than a few seconds.

Maybe he was hiding gems under a bush or drawing something on the tree. Nothing too complicated, since time was of the essence, but something just tedious enough to cause a slight delay and May would reappear in one moment…

Two…

Three….

Four, five, six, seven-

Shit.
 
Jurriaan was getting a headache. Mostly because this irritating girl did not seem to be understanding what it meant to be a tool. Despite her claim of being one, she certainly was not inclined to act like one.

He eyed her at her accusation and rolled his eyes. “There are no words in this or any other language to describe how much I do not care. I do not care about you. I do not care about them. They’re in my way. That’s all.”



Vlad chuckled. While I am flattered you think I am in control of the elements, Winona, this is merely a consequence of the sudden drop in energy pressure when I removed my magic.

“Vlad, when they get here… do you know why my father took the kids’ blood?” Bram asked, watching the road with binoculars. The snow was making it difficult to see.

Vlad sighed. “You father is employing the ancient art of blood magic. I am a little embarrassed that I discarded that idea based on the dark art being lost.”

“Damn,” Bram whispered. “You mean like what bound you and me?”

“The very same. Though, I would consider it a bastardization of the magic that binds you and I.”

“Explain.”

“It would appear that your father cobbled together blood magic and what we consider modern slayer magic. My guess is that he was trying to put the puzzle pieces together with only having glimpses of the full picture from various sources. While it works, it can be broken.”

“What does it do, exactly?”

“Depends on what he is going for. He could draw energy, exercise control, even invade the mental realm. But not all at once, as he does not have the full picture.”

“So the most logical thing would be to shoot him right away.”

“No! If he has used Winona’s blood, killing him could possibly kill her.”

“Are you f—”

“Language.”

“—reaking kidding me? Then how are we supposed to defeat him?”

Vlad set his jaw. “Winona and I are going to break the magic.”

“I think I see them,” Bram said, lowering the binoculars. “Where’s May?”

“Uh…” Rue said, sweeping her binoculars across the landscape. “I can’t find him.”



In the forest, hidden from the castle’s view, a squad of three slayers sat, waiting. When the forth returned, dragging May along with him, they all looked up. The senior slayer in group stepped forward.

“You’re the mage kid, right? How many people are in that castle right now? What are their plans?” She pulled out a wickedly sharp knife. “Talk or this is going to get nasty.”
 
May was not happy about being manhandled, and he made it clear by glaring at the group of slayers as they pulled him along. The lady and her sharp knife did admittedly scare him - a lot - but he was already so used to this song and dance by now after living with Bram and Vlad for half a year that he managed to tamp it down right away.

Besides, his phone was still on speaker, even if it was in his pocket. Hopefully people would get the gist of the conversation and not say anything to him that might compromise it, though if these slayers were worth their salt they would have frisked him anyways.

"There's a billion people in there and their plan is to kick your ass," he said harshly, even though that knife was a little too close for comfort and he kind of really wished that somebody else was here with him right now.

At least he had been right about forming a perimeter, though; if there were goons like these this close to the castle, then they needed to be dealt with. Maybe this was even a blessing in disguise, if he could distract them long enough to get his hands on the quartz bomb that he had hidden up his sleeve.
 
He was not even appreciating her eye rolls, so she stopped bothering exaggerating them, though they were hard to completely give up on.



“Yeah, got that,” she affirmed- Jurriaan was a master of ‘not caring’.



So… You, then, Winona concluded. He wasn’t controlling the weather, but his actions were the cause of it. But she just shouldn’t expect the snow to start acting of its own accord to help her, which was really what she had wanted to know.



Getting close. Maybe a few minutes.



She was keeping pace with her captor now, because Vlad hadn’t indicated they needed more time, and because she preferred that there was slack on the silver chain.



“Elizabeth left you for a vampire, too, didn’t she,” Winona asked, though it wasn’t really a question. “Both your kids- Chose the monster who cared about them, over the one who raised them.”





“What? How is that-,” Alex exclaimed trying to wrap his head around what Vlad was describing. “He has Devon and May’s blood too! Are they at risk?”



He was about to say more, because Vlad may have sounded confident that he and Winona could break whatever the thing was, but if Devon and May were affected too, they ought to consider-



But there was muffled conversation that he couldn’t quite make out, and his eyes grew wide as he grabbed at his phone.



voices w/may ?????, he sent to Vlad and Bram, grateful that he had just been texting the two of them the day before about his travel itinerary and he didn’t have to scroll far at all to bring the conversation up.



idk if they can hear us



i could disconnect him from the call



Alex really did /not/ want to do that. But it was the only thing he knew he /could/ do, to prevent them from being overheard.



He was the ‘owner’ of the group call, so he poked around on his phone, hoping to find something-



Oh, he could seek out other phones in the area to connect to the call, a big ‘no’ on that-



He could ‘mute’ May, so that May could hear them but they couldn’t hear him- Nope, that was the opposite of what he wanted.



He could…. Add a voice modulator so that whatever one person said, he would hear it out of his own phone like they had just inhaled helium- Amusing perhaps in another situation, but right now it just made him angry at how incredibly unhelpful it was.
 
The woman’s eyes narrowed as May responded. She lifted the knife, but another one of the group—the man who had grabbed May—caught her wrist.

“Wait, wait, are we allowed to cut up the mage kid?”

The woman jerked her wrist from the man’s grasp with a glare. “He didn’t say we couldn’t.”

The smaller man with the bandage on his leg cleared his throat. “Yeah, but he could get real pissed if—”

“Learn to be autonomous, Frederick,” the woman snapped.

“Let’s text him,” the third man said.

“He’s not going to answer his text messages!” the bandaged man—Frederick—retorted.

“These pansies aren’t going to cut you up, but I will,” the woman said, grabbing May’s coat, which she now realized covered probably ten sweaters. She brandished the knife again. “I’m only going to ask once again. How many people are in there?”



Vlad opened his mouth to answer Alex, but quickly closed it. He had been about to cheerfully inform him that as long as they were in the protected castle, Jurriaan couldn’t activate his sigils. But May, of course, was not in the castle. And as sounds of other people threatening May only increased, he dearly regretted not realizing that there could be people in the woods already.

“Alex is texting,” Scarlet informed in whispered Gaelic. She doubted whoever had May spoke that, but whispered it just in case. She read the text quietly and then typed out Vlad’s response. Or, rather, her interpretation of Vlad’s response.

No disconnecty need 2 kno wat be hap

what scarlet said, Bram agreed.

Wen ye olde Leeuwen get here Vlady’ll raze teh magik protect teh sugar crystal

Bram was impressed. Even though Vlad had disabled autocorrect on his phone out of annoyance, it took dedication to text with that amount of ridiculousness.

He lifted the binoculars to his eyes again and scanned the tree line. In rapid Romani, Bram said, “Rue, Luka, keep your eyes peeled for our shortest Leeuwen-Drakonii.”

“I do not understand why you insist on hyphenating with no regards to alphabetical order,” Vlad muttered after Rue answered in the affirmative for herself and her cousin.

“My name goes first, obviously.”

Um… Vlad began in response to Winona. I guess, in a way, it is my doing. Yes, Bram can see you with his binoculars. Once you get close, I am going to return the magic to the land. The snow will not help you, but the lights will.



Jurriaan stopped very suddenly when Winona had mentioned his daughter.

Winona! Vlad nearly shrieked. No!

Jurriaan spun and backhanded her right across the jaw.

Vlad hovered on the edge of Winona’s mind, spitting fire but not acting out of respect for her request not to set anyone on fire without her asking him to. At least, Vlad supposed, Winona would know nothing of Bram’s mother and therefore would not mention her. Though, he could not remember Bram talking about his sister enough for Winona to know Elizabeth by name.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jurriaan snarled. “So I suggest you stop talking.”


“Vlad,” Bram said in a very quiet voice. The rest was in Dutch, which threw Vlad for a second. “Did he just hit my daughter?”

“Yes,” Vlad responded after a moment of hesitation.

“I’m gonna kill him,” Bram continued in that same tone of voice. “First my mom, then my sister, then my vampire, now my daughter—that bastard. I’m gonna kill him.”

Vlad prayed that Alex hadn’t taken up Dutch in his spare time. Scarlet, he knew, had an affinity for languages like Bram and knew the language, but he didn’t like the thought of the rest knowing that Bram wasn’t always goofy and easy-going.
 
May scrunched up his nose, because this was the most disorganized kidnapping effort he had ever seen. None of these people seemed to trust each other or know what the plan was. Of course, that made it all the better for him. Not so much for the would-be slayers. And then he was being dragged forward by his coat, so he didn't really have a lot of time to think anymore anyways.

He glared up at the woman, ignoring how incredibly sweaty his palms were as he tried to jiggle his arm subtly to get one of his bracelets into his hand.

"You can't hurt me," May said, only half as confident as he sounded. "Your boss wants me for his weird blood magic ritual, and if you kill me, he's gonna be real mad at you. Which won't bug me that much, because I'd be dead, but do you really wanna risk that?" Just a little bit farther. He almost had the crystal in his palm, and then he could use it as a smoke bomb and get the hell out of here.
 
Alex knew a lot of languages- He had grown up speaking both English and Spanish at home, he was at least conversational in French, and could piece together a decent understanding of a book in Portuguese or Italian due to similarities in Romance languages. He’d studied both Mandarin and ASL, and if he really needed, he could probably get by if stranded in a town where people predominately spoke Russian, Arabic or German, though he certainly hadn’t listed those on his college applications.

Even with the consideration that Alex had had the privilege of frequent international travel and a family that intentionally raised him to by multilingual, Alex thought he had worked very hard on his understanding of other languages and had a lot to be proud of. That was a lot of languages he could ask for the nearest bathroom in- And of course, none of those languages were any of the ones being used in hushed whispers. Great.

‘ok but- may and devon? They in danger from the blood magic?’, he sent. He was grateful to see that Bram was correct when he checked visually- Scarlet did seem to have possession of her sire’s phone- because otherwise he was going to have to add ‘Vlad currently having a stroke’ to his list of things to freak out about.

Freak out about later, he reminded himself.

Right now he needed to concentrate around the area he had last seen May, and be ready to provide cover as needed.





'Winona, yes', Winona thought, though she didn’t share that with Vlad. Vlad wanted her to deliver Jurriaan Leeuwen, and Winona had no issue destabilizing him first.

She’d cut him off from his transport and his thugs, and she’d like the phone next- But since that was too obvious, she’d go for his control instead.

She didn’t bother trying to move out of the way, and smiled at him through her split lip, the blood trickling down her chin. She raised her wrist to her mouth, wincing as the silver cauterized the break in her skin.

It wasn’t necessary by any means- But it hadn’t been necessary for him to make a show out of sharpening his knife, either, so.

Mostly she was just being unsettling for the hell of it.

Since she’d been keeping up and he’d stopped, Winona actually found herself a few steps ahead, and she looked back at him with raised eyebrows and a tilted chin, as if to ask if they were continuing on now.

“Sure, of course,” she said, her tone skeptical but placating, like she was clearly just humoring him. “Whatever you want to think to make you happy.”
 
The woman narrowed her eyes at May. “How do you know about that?”

“He’s right,” said Frederick. “If we cut him, he could lose too much blood.”

“Let’s take him to the boss,” the bigger man proposed.

“That is a terrible idea,” the woman said, but she was ignored as her stupid colleagues all nodded at one another like they had hit upon the solution. “If we step out there, that vampire will kill us somehow!”

The other three agreed that this was unfortunately a good point from the leader of the group that they had not appointed.

The woman sighed. Mob rule was against her. “You go,” she said, pointing to the man who had grabbed May in the first place. “At least put a knife to his throat or something so they won’t kill you.”

She didn’t add that they were going to kill him regardless of the knife, but it might at least give them pause.

The man nodded and grabbed May’s coat. Putting his own knife at May’s throat, he marched him forward. “No funny business, or the boss’ll have to use your blood while you’re dead.”

Which wouldn’t work, of course. But he had been recruited for his size, not his intelligence.



Jurriaan ignored Winona—mostly because he didn’t want to lose his temper again—and dragged her after him as he picked up the pace. He could see two people standing on the castle’s wall. One was red-headed, and both were tall. So where was the castle’s resident vampire? Surely not as incapacitated as he was pretending to be.



Vlad sighed when Scarlet read him Alex’s text. He dictated a response.

inside castle they safe outside they not

“I see May!” Rue said. “Some man has him—there’s a knife.”

“We’ve got other problems, too,” Bram sighed, lowering his binoculars as his father and Winona approached.

“I could hit him,” Luka said, referring to the man who had May. “But it would give away my position.”

“Wait,” Bram decided. “They’re not going to kill him.” He hoped. He hoped there would be no situations that included his father killing off one kid to prove a point. In fact, better safe than sorry. “Shorty, if you can do something, do it now.”

Once Winona and Jurriaan got within Leeuwen-shouting distance, Bram shouted, “You bastard! Don’t think I didn’t see you hit my kid!”

This was, of course, not at all what he and Devon had decided upon, so Devon was not prepared to hear his paternal figure calling his own paternal figure rude names. He was relieved, however, to see that his twin had not gotten herself killed.

For his part, Jurriaan waited until he reached the castle’s foundations before turning his attention to his son. “It’s been a long time, Abraham,” Jurriaan said in Dutch.

It had been some time since Bram had heard his heart-language spoken with the old-Dutch accent, and he had to pause for a second so that it didn’t cause him to forget that the man speaking it was a monster.

“Win, you okay?” Bram asked, before turning his eyes on his father and continuing in English so everyone present could understand.

“You remember my name,” Bram said in mock shock. “And don’t try to act like you didn’t take blood from my kids for dark magic. If you wanted to pretend to be my father, you shouldn’t have started off with that. Now give me back my kid.”

“Why are you hiding in a vampire’s castle instead of talking to me face to face?” Jurriaan asked as if Bram hadn’t spoken. Though, he spoke in slow English as if Bram had forgotten how to speak Dutch. He tilted his head at Devon, who stood silently next to Bram. “That one takes after you, and this mouthy one takes after your… what? Partner? Spouse? Lover? What are you two anyway?”

“He’s angry about something Winona said, and he’s trying to make you feel the same way,” Vlad said evenly.

“Joke’s on him. I’m not offended at all,” Bram said quietly before shouting, “The word you’re looking for is ‘friend’!”

“You had three children with a ‘friend’?”

“I had… six?” Bram quickly counted on his fingers. Amya, Scarlet, May, Alex, Devon, Winona. “Yeah, six kids. Your own fault, though. Wouldn’t have them if you hadn’t killed their parents or turned them into vampires. Except for May and Alex. Guess they’re our fault.”

Jurriaan had meant it as an insult, but Bram was excited to be talking about the adopted monsters he cared for with his vampire ‘friend’. He was entirely too happy.

“Thought I’d be repeating the family tradition of messed up parents, but it didn’t turn out too bad,” Bram said cheerfully.

And there it was. Exactly the in Jurriaan needed. “‘Didn’t repeat the tradition’?” he echoed. He gave Winona’s chain a little shake. “This one ran away from you, didn’t she? Some father you turned out to be.”

Bram stiffened before drooping as he turned his eyes back on Winona. Why had she run off? Didn’t she trust him? Didn’t she want to stay with him?

“Bram,” Vlad murmured, drawing out his companion’s preferred name gently.

“The hell he didn’t!” Devon shouted, leaning aggressively over the stones. “You suck! Bram took me and my problem-child sister in for no reason other than he’s a good person! You’re just a lonely old jerk!”

Bram pulled him back, resting his hands on the teen’s shoulders. “Thanks, Dev.” To his father, he said. “Give me my kid back.”

Jurriaan turned his attention to Winona. “She told me repeatedly she doesn’t want to go back to you. Do you, child? Do you want to go back to your dads?”
 
May rolled his eyes, because really? They had already established that they couldn't kill him. Their surprise at his knowledge just made him look smug, though the fear was definitely back now that there was a knife to his throat. He swallowed, then finally, finally managed to get a firm hold on the crystal that he had been trying and failing to jiggle into his hand.

Ok. They were going to take him to Jurriaan, which was bad, because he already had Winona as a hostage. May being an additional hostage would only make things worse, and he took a deep breath as he obediently followed the man who had a knife to him. He couldn't kill him, obviously, which made things more difficult. An explosion at this range would be a bit iffy, for him as well, but...

Hearing Bram's voice come out of his phone was basically all the sign that he needed, and he looked up at the big guy holding him, his eyes wide and innocent before his face stretched into a grin.

"Think fast!" He exclaimed as he tossed the crystal up between them. It exploded with a loud bang, though it was all light and sound meant to stun more than anything. As soon as the goon was distracted, he put all his weight down and stomped on his foot before taking off back towards the main gate.

Except that was where Jurriaan was. Bad plan. Bad idea. Spinning around on his heel, he turned and took off in the opposite direction instead, deciding that he had a better chance of losing them in the forest. He pulled his phone out of his pocket as he ran, zigzagging through trees as best he could.

"Whew, ok. Don't worry about me, I'm fine! Focus on helping Win!" He said into the receiver before tossing his phone back into his pocket.
 
“One out of six’s better than two for two,” Winona noted dryly, though she did not try to spin her departure as anything less than it had been.

Can I strangle him, Winona suggested. He was using the silver chain as a decorative leash just to rub it in Bram’s face, and there was more than enough slack that she could wind it around his neck- And it would be extremely satisfying.

Tell me when. Her fingers itched for violence.

“I have no fathers,” Winona answered evenly, annoyed that Jurriaan had forced her hand on this. She did not wish to anger or upset Bram or Vlad in an already charged situation, but there was no sense in lying. It would be better, in the long run.

“But in half a year- They never hit me,” Winona told Jurriaan. “You- An hour. Old habit?”



Alex was less concerned about giving up his own location- He had May’s wards to protect him, and he was already way more visible than Luka and Rue. Plus it wasn’t like he was that great of a shot, so.

When the big guy recovered enough from the explosion to try and start after May, still holding one hand up to his ear and squinting, Alex fired twice. Both shots hit into the ground more than 10 feet away from the guy, and Alex readjusted his aim to better account for the pull. But it had had the desired effect regardless- In his haste to get away from potential gunfire and his continued disorientation, the man had run straight into a tree with enough force that Alex couldn’t help but wince in sympathy.

“We can multi-task,” he reminded May. He was worried about Winona, of course, but Winona had no qualms about using extreme violence if needed in self-defense. Or unneeded, really.

“Rue, do you know where those tunnels are at?”

She probably had a better view on May’s location, and far less to concentrate on, than Vlad did.

“Or maybe you could ‘fly’ again, if you can get close enough to the walls?” He didn’t really want May to go sailing through the forest at a height that made him an easy target, but a quick up and over shouldn’t expose him too much.
 
The pain in Bram’s expression was clear as day when Winona said she had no fathers. Devon wanted to scream at her. Why did she have to be so messed up? Why couldn’t his crazy sister just be normal? Why couldn’t she just be happy to have people who loved her instead of whatever-the-hell she thought running off and causing trouble would do for her? Didn’t she get it? She’d been through hell, right? So why couldn’t she understand that this was the farthest from? Why did she have to be so horrible to take up all the time and effort of their guardians that he was practically invisible? And then to act like this. Well, she could just freaking run off, then. Then he could live happily ever after with the only two people in the world who didn’t see him as a burden.

No strangling, Vlad said calmly. He seemed entirely unaffected by what Winona had said, though whether it was because he was unaffected or because he was used to this sort of thing was impossible to tell. You may find this hard to believe, but violence is not always the answer.

Jurriaan ignored Winona, instead watching the familiar slump return to his son’s shoulders. For his part, Jurriaan seemed to relax. He ignored the simmering kid next to Bram and addressed his son again.

“Son, you should have known better than to think that vampires—half or not—could ever be family. In fact, thanks to vampires, I’m your only family left.”

Bram would have liked someone out there to not act he was worthless to them. He knew his father was doing this on purpose. He knew exactly what he was doing. It wasn’t like Jurriaan Leeuwen had any new tricks up his sleeve—well, except maybe the blood magic thing.

But some part of Bram still wanted Jurriaan Leeuwen to be the father he had always wanted him to be. Surely, somewhere under that anger and hate and need for control was a person. A person who could love his child. Could be proud of him, could want to have him around. Even after all these years, Bram craved that relationship.

But his father could never treat him like an equal. There was something wrong—something deep inside of him that needed to dominate everything. Bram didn’t know what had snapped in his father when a vampire spared him. Had he always been like this, just able to keep it under the surface? Or had he mentally changed? He wanted to believe he could heal his father. Wanted to believe his father could change.

But his father had come back from the dead—a life changing event. He hadn’t sought out his son. He had schemed in the shadows, only coming out when he needed to get people out of his way. Bram knew his father had been chipping away at his enemies from the sidelines since he had been “resurrected”. There was no change. Not even the slightest.

Bram would have said something decidedly rude to his father had they not been distracted by a bang as May exploded one of his famous crystal bombs. Jurriaan would have spared the mage a dirty glance only, had this not been followed by two explosions of snow ten feet from the man.

Vlad didn’t need to open his eyes to figure out who had fired. The suppressor might negate the sonic boom, but he knew the clicking of that weapon anywhere. It had been his sole means of survival for two years. He sighed. He understood Alex’s panic, but it would have been nice to hide the fact that they had long-distance weapons for a bit longer.

Jurriaan grabbed Winona, dragging her close and putting a knife to her throat.

That wasn’t Vlad with the marksman riffle—the slayer would be dead if so—which must mean they had others. He doubted it was one of the Lupus as the Roma family knew to kill a slayer on sight. One of the teenagers, then. The one from South America.

“Yeah!” Rue answered Alex. “May, I can guide you to them, if you want. Luka can manage on his own.”

Her cousin grunted the affirmative.

“Make your demands already so I can turn them down,” Bram growled down at his father.

“I’ll kill him regardless, but give me that vampire, and you won’t be caught in the crossfire.” It was honestly the first demand that popped into Jurriaan’s head. His demands were all the castle’s occupants dead and his son under his control, and he would do that regardless of compliance.

“Hell, no!” Bram shouted.

Jurriaan shrugged. He had expected nothing less. Shoving Winona to the ground, he activated the spell he had carefully drawn out weeks ago.

Blood and silver! Vlad swore inside Winona’s mind. It’s not a draining spell, Win! It’s a compulsion spell! He’s not in your head, he’s in your will!

It was complicated, too, and Vlad bit back his rising panic.

Jurriaan motioned at unseen forces in the forest. At least fifty people appeared from the tree line, decked out in weapons. One made a grab for May’s coat as he zipped past in his zigging and zagging.

“Reactivating the magic,” Vlad informed everyone. “May, you can follow the lights.”

The air shimmered, and the lights appeared, flashing angrily at the intruders and blocking them from clear views of the castle. Trees creaked and the mountain groaned. Wolves howled nearby, and the snow around the castle thickened.

Jurriaan Leeuwen was unaffected. He smiled up at the castle. “Child, be a lamb and open the gates.”

If you touch the gates, they will open, Vlad informed Winona with certainty, dropping his control of his familial magic and pouring his magic into Winona. If there was ever a time for your stubbornness, now is it.
 
May squeaked audibly when Alex fired, more from surprise than anything. He trusted his boyfriend and his aim, of course, but having shots fired so close to you was still a bit startling.

He was about to decline Rue’s invitation; he was already out here, and he might as well be of /some/ help while he was, but... oh boy, that was a lot more people than he had initially planned for. Even if he wanted to be useful in this situation, he had no idea how to do it. All he knew was that being captured was not going to help anything, so he needed to avoid that. And if following the lights was going to help him avoid that, then that was what he was going to do.

Except.

No. He couldn’t do that. He had no idea if it would even work. If he did it wrong, it would be disastrous. Even if he did it right, it would be disastrous. Then again, there were always countermeasures put in place to stop him if things went really wrong. But it would still be pretty terrible for everyone involved.

Deciding to hold off on /that/ particular plan, at least for the time being, he pulled his phone out of his pocket, ducking another set of hands who were trying to grab at him. They managed to get his coat, but he wiggled out of it before they managed to actually get a hold of him.

“Right! Following the lights, got it,” he exclaimed as he did just that, catching sight of the glimmer in the trees and chasing after it like a lifeline.
 
We already agreed, Winona snarled, not masking her frustration. That today it /is/ the answer.



She was not moving more than twenty from Jurriaan until he was dead.



Winona was about to say something moderately sentimental about Jurriaan actually being the reason vampires had chosen Bram as family, but there was a blade at her throat. It would have ruined her stoic effect anyways.



Winona shuddered as the spell took effect- She couldn’t be certain nothing like this had never been done to her before, but it she knew it felt different than the times her masters had stopped being just passengers in her mind and taken over control.



“I don’t know how-” was her immediate response, because there was no lock on the gates she could find a key to, no obvious mechanism. She did not know the spell to release them, so this was a simple enough command to ignore- Damn it.



Don’t tell me how to do what he wants!



think think think, Winona told herself, trying to recall Maria’s instructions about how to safeguard her autonomy-



She began convulsing further, when she felt something from Vlad’s end of their connection, and mentally recoiled from it. What was he doing? He was /supposed/ to be protecting the others-



Winona fell to the ground, and on all fours she told Jurriaan, “I… cannot.”



She resisted the urge to explain why, and bit her tongue to prevent herself from bleating like a sheep- She was actually trying to complete his requests, after all. Just… In sequential order.
 
“Vlad!” Bram asked, panic in his voice.

“No!” Vlad yelled back, instinctively knowing what Bram was asking. “We can’t risk it killing Winona!”

I thought that was obvious! Vlad groaned. The gates would recognize our connection—of course they would!

But now was not the time to be arguing. Now was the time for thinking.

Slayer magic is still meaning magic—as is compulsory blood magic. He didn’t say which gates he wanted opened. I’m sure he meant the gates in the town.

Jurriaan watched Winona struggle against his magic with an expression of curiosity. Though, as vampiric magic prodded his spell, his suspicions were confirmed. Perfect. This meant he had a choice to make, though. Which spell to use on the mage? Though, if he wanted to use the compulsion sigils, he’d need to first use the mind spells. The only problem was that he was not sure his sigils were specific enough to maintain a strong hold. He had spent weeks analyzing the mage’s blood, and he still was not sure what May was.

He hated hoping for the best, but here was assuming he was prepared enough. Jurriaan first activated the mind sigils he had drawn in May’s blood. Next was the compulsion sigils. He was also not sure they would work well at the same time. The vampires he had experimented on had been insane from previous experiments, and they only one he thought would give him a real indication of his spell’s limits had escaped.

He still had her blood though, if he could lure her from the castle.

Stop, Jurriaan Leeuwen commanded May, assuming both spells were in working order. Return this instant.

Then, all that remained was to try out his life-force spell.

Vlad gasp as dark magic reverberated through his land and connected with May. “May! May, can you hear me?”

“What?” Bram shouted, turning to look down inside the courtyard.

Just as his eyes found Vlad, the vampire went rigid. Fire burned across his mental link to Winona, sucking at the air in his lungs. Vlad gasped and keeled over.

“Vlad?!” Scarlet cried, doing the only thing she could think of and shaking her sire. “Bram! Bram, he’s not responding!”

Jurriaan chuckled. Though he couldn’t see what was happening behind the gates, he could read the terror in his son’s shoulders. As Bram spun to face him, rage on his features, Jurriaan smiled and dropped his eyes to where Winona was fighting his control.

“So foolish with their need for others.” He flicked his eyes up to Bram. “Imagine—centuries of Drakonii magic at my disposal, and not a thing you can do about it.”

Bram snarled from between clenched teeth.

“Try to kill me, and the magic will destroy her control.” He indicated Winona. “It will destroy your mage’s mind, and then slowly kill you vampire while I steal his life force to rebuild my own.”

Bram’s vision fogged. He couldn’t just sit here and let his father do this. He couldn’t kill his father, but he could kill everyone else.

“Alex, Luka,” he said, his voice eerily calm. “Fire.”

The word was barely from his mouth when one of the lead slayers at the edge of the words jerked and fell back. A second one quickly followed, and then the ranks of slayers rushed the castle.

“Devon,” Bram said quietly. “I’m sure they have grappling hooks. The castle should reject them, but if not—” Bram pulled out a crystalline blade the size of one of Vlad’s small throwing knives.

“What’s this?”

“A gift from Starless. It was forged in dragon’s fire. It’ll cut through anything.”

Devon stared reverently at the blade. “Okay, but where are you going to be?”

Bram didn’t answer.

From his headset, Bram could hear Rue quietly calling out distances to her cousin. They had the castle protected. Bram turned and made eye contact with Scarlet.

Scarlet’s eyes widened. “Bram, no!”

Bram jumped off the wall, a pair of knives flashing in his hands. He landed on the first group to arrive at the wall and made short work of them with his knives. Eerie lights appeared next to Bram like a pair of retainers and ignited everything they touched with cold black fire.

Devon cursed. “Scarlet! What do we do?!”

The vampiress was crouched with her eyes closed and her hands on the stones of the courtyard. “Bram’s got the slayers, Vlad’s dealing with the spells. We protect the castle. If our defenses fall, things will get bad. Talk to me, May.”

Jurriaan watched his son take out his fear and frustration on the nearest slayers before turning his eyes back to Winona. Years of watching Bram interact with Vlad had taught him how specific he had to be. The previous command had been purely for effect.

“Child. Open the gates to Castle Drakonii this instant.”

Still here, Vlad told Winona, his mental voice weak. He didn’t think he needed to explain what was happening. Once Jurriaan had established a connection with Winona, he was able to bypass the castle’s defenses by traveling via the connection between Vlad and Winona. Surely Winona could feel the surge of energy coming and then leaving. He had been toying with just dumping all his energy into Bram to cut Jurriaan’s supply off, but it didn’t work like that and Bram would resurrect him so he could kill him with his own two hands.

We can use this to our advantage. I bet he has other spells ready to go. If you can grab him, I might be able to activate the mind spell. If we mentally attack him, we should be able to bring him to his knees.

Vlad paused. Unfortunately, we may drag May into this as well. And in doing so, our minds will be fairly open to one another—you, me, Jurriaan, and May. It’s dangerous, but it could get him to drop the magic.

Entering Jurriaan Leeuwen's mind was the last thing Vlad wanted to do, but it was the best thing his clouded mind could come up with.
 
May froze immediately as Jurriaan’s spell kicked in. He tried to stop it, gritting his teeth and digging his heels into the ground, but the compulsion was too strong. Worse than that, he could feel the other man in his /head/. May did not want anybody in his head. There were things in there that no outsider had any right to know, and he hadn’t been trained in mental defenses enough to know how to keep someone out of the important stuff.

He was very much on the verge of panicking when he spoke into his phone.

“I can’t stop!” He exclaimed, and there was a hint of real fear in his voice. He had to obey the orders in his head, and soon found himself back at the front gate, his arms awkwardly at his sides as he still tried to fight the compulsion to be there.

This was pretty much the worst possible situation. If Winona opened the gates to the castle, then everything was done for. Worse, May could feel his energy starting to wane, as though something was siphoning it out. He gasped at the sensation, then grit his teeth to try to fight against it, but this was no good.

His magic wasn’t specialized or strong enough to get rid of slayer magic. The only way he could get out of this was...

He bit down on his lower lip and brought his phone to his ear, but he didn’t know what to say. This was a very, very stupid plan, and would quite possibly kill him. Sure, it would be nice if it didn’t, but even then...

But May didn’t see any other choice. And with Jurriaan siphoning off their energy the way he was, May could see only one way to break free of his control, and that was to stop being the person that he had control over. He just hoped that in the process he didn’t actually cause the end of the world.

He dropped his phone and took a deep breath, ultimately deciding that anything he could say was pointless. He hoped Alex would forgive him for this, but he didn’t know how to say that without worrying him unnecessarily, so he decided silence was the better option. With the distraction of his phone gone, he turned his eyes to Jurriaan, his lip curling back from his teeth as he began to focus his magic inwards instead of outwards.

“You are a complete and utter bastard,” he snarled, because he needed to buy a little bit of time for this to work. “But you are messing with things that you don’t even know the half of.”

When they were kids, Agni had tried explaining to him the way that being a vessel worked. He always described it like being a well. Power flowed in, and it was fine, as long as May was constantly using magic and getting rid of the excess prana that was constantly flooding him. It was good, and useful, even. But if he stopped taking the excess out, then it would overflow and cause disaster.

All things considered, this was already a disaster, and who knew what Jurriaan would do if he was fully revived /and/ had all of Vlad’s power behind him, so. At least if May went into meltdown mode, he knew that there was something in place to help stop him.

Taking another deep breath, he focused again, closing his eyes, and this time the air around him seemed to change, to grow heavier and colder. The well was filling up. Just a little more, and it would overflow. It was a little bit terrifying, really, and May was just glad that Jurriaan was stealing his life force instead of his actual magic.

“If you guys have a plan of some kind,” May gritted out, hoping that they did, so that he didn’t have to force his hand like this. “Now would be a very good time to use it, before I do something very, very stupid.”
 
Risk it, dumbass, Winona commanded when Vlad shot down whatever idea Bram had been about to propose. But she knew he was too much of an idiot to do so, no matter how much force she put behind the demand.



But he had a point about interpretation- Did a rib cage count as a gate? She had no issues opening Jurriaan’s ribcage.



She began crawling towards him, her entire body convulsing in pain as she tried to disobey what she knew was the true intent of his order.



Conceptualize conceptualize conceptualize – Maria had said that was important.



“It doesn’t matter if it makes sense, it doesn’t even matter if it’s accurate,” the woman had said, when Winona had pointed out that Maria was using too many metaphors. Was a mind a box, or a phone, or a fire or ...?



“Well, it /does/, but- For you, at least, I suspect the rather… Unique clarity of your focus might allow for considerable wiggle room. Conceptualize what is happening, imagine it as specifically as you can, and then decide what must be done to turn it to your advantage.”



They had even practiced a few times, on Winona’s insistence, and Maria had made her swear half a dozen times that she would never tell anyone about this.



Passenger seat.



Right now she had Vlad in the passenger seat, except she didn’t want to boot him out the way she had Maria- The person she wanted ‘out’ wasn’t even in the car at all.



He was… Hijacking her auto-pilot, she decided. Back at the school, Winona had once spent several hours mostly ignoring Alex’s excitement about new trials of self-driving cars, but she got the general gist.



As long her hands were on the wheel, Jurriaan had the power.



… She could put someone else in the driver seat, because their ability to drive her car had not been tampered with. She shared this thought with Vlad succinctly, imagining them both in a car she was driving, then switching what seat they both sat it. If she was the passenger, it didn’t matter what Jurriaan willed her to do.



(Winona sometimes wished she could be more like Alex in several ways, but in this instance, it was probably for the best that she shared neither his interest in understanding self-driving cars, nor his need for his metaphors that actually made sense with how things worked.)



Go ahead, she told him, because she had no doubt he saw it as something he needed ‘permission’ for.



Winona had made the terrible mistake of engaging Alex further in the conversation when she’d pointed out that it seemed pointless to have a car that did the driving if you still had to sit up next to the brakes and the wheel and whatnot, why couldn’t you take a nap in the back seat- Apparently, this was /all/ sorts of nonsense.



There still had to be a driver. Because it was only the driver who could recognize clear and present danger. And respond, by taking back control from the piloting program.



The direct command was much harder to ignore for Winona and she couldn’t resist crawling forward. She couldn’t resist the compulsion, but she could make it harder to obey. And maybe make it dangerous to obey. Winona reached into her pocket and took out a small knife, and drove it into her foot-



OWshithellshitthathurtdamnSHITthathurt



She wrestled for control, hoping the ‘clear and present danger’ thing might help her in the fight, but as far as she could tell, Jurriaan was still hanging on- And now he had May too.



That was…. Unacceptable. She was willing to cut off her own hand if it would prevent her from opening the gate, but May’s hand were another matter.



Leave the stupid to me, she chastised May. Or Vlad, at least. ‘Grab him’, physically? Or mentally?



She wasn’t actually all that sure about these other spells Vlad suspected Jurriaan might have. He seemed pretty intent on the willpower thing…. Which was a bit strange, actually. He could have gone into her mind easily, and carried her back to the castle to wreak whatever havoc he wanted, behind his own wards and guards.



“Keys in the ignition,” she mumbled. Of course, he didn’t get to gloat quite so much that route, and there was risk- But the only reason Winona even had a plan of defense, even know it might be dangerous for him was because she had practiced on a very reluctant Maria. Who had definitely not told anyone. So-



“You’re scared,” she said slowly, turning to Jurriaan. The pain in her foot was not enough to regain her own control, but it provided enough tangible distraction from his orders for her to at least make some what of an effort to face him instead of continuing her hobbled crawl towards the gate.



“Scared,” she repeated, almost taunting this time. Not of her, not really- Admittedly he was likely wary of poking around in her head, distrusting of traps and bad memories, even if he was confident he could break them… Maybe there was something else he didn’t want to find.



“You could have walked right into my head and into the castle,” she reminded him, her voice hoarse and a little slurred. “But you took the long way ‘round, the most difficult path- Just so you wouldn’t have to see.”



Do it, I can take him, Winona told Vlad and maybe May. She knew Jurriaan knew they were in communication so she kept if brief, even though she suspected he had no way of knowing the content of their communication. She didn’t specify if she meant Vlad’s idea, or was just reiterating her proposal that he take over control from her and away from Jurriaan.



“See that your son is happier without you, so much so even an outsider could tell,” she sneered, because especially her early memories of watching Bram and Vlad interact were tinged with confusion at the strength of their friendship. Confusion of it, yes, but not a shred of doubt. “You bypassed my mind because even /I/ can see he has always been better off without you!,” she said with a bloodied laugh, convulsing so terribly she had bit into her tongue. “It was true for the rest of them, too, then?”

___


“The plan does /not/ involve you doing anything stupid,” Alex said quickly and more confidently than he felt, not ceasing his firing into the woods.



It was easy. The slayers clearly had no concern about acting as canon fodder for their leader, or if they had- Their leader had undoubtedly found some way to remove it. They swarmed into the reach of his scope, and all he had to do was pull the trigger.



He was hardly a perfect shot, but he wasn’t completely terrible. He was probably only making a successful hit once for every two or even three Luca made, so any time he saw someone drop in a particularly sudden, final way, he hoped it had been Luca and not himself. Statistically, it seemed more likely. And it helped to keep the bile from rising too far up his throat.



“Especially not something ‘very, very’ stupid- There’s a one-very limit on stupidity,” he continued, hoping May could hear him. If it was setting fire to the Chairman’s house and stealing a Councilor’s car, Alex suspected May would not even have mentioned it before enacting it, and at most admitted it was ‘kinda stupid’. So whatever he was thinking was probably….. Really super not good.



“Like Scarlet said- We keep up the defenses.” Alex had a terrible inkling that either May or Winona opening the gate might cause said defenses to fall, but- There had to be other defenses, right?



(It was an unplottable, unfindable, disappearing castle with magic lights that led threats to their doom- What other defenses did it need?, Alex’s pessimism pointed out. He ignored it.)
 
This was not good. Scarlet seemed to be maintaining the magic of the castle well enough as every time a grappling hook found purchase, the creepy castle moved the stones until the hook fell from the wall. It was weird and fascinating. It also blocked stray bullets from the slayers down below, which Devon thought was useful.

Still, Devon figured Bram’s father was stealing the castle’s energy, and once that energy waned, that castle would become a regular stack of stones.

“What do we do if the castle is breached?” Devon asked.

Scarlet would have liked to assure everyone that everything was going to be fine, but the castle’s resident vampire was unresponsive on the stones next to her, battling magic with his own. “We go to Vlad’s room, take the passages, and disappear. Pray Jurriaan Leeuwen chokes on a chicken bone or something.”

That was not comforting, Devon decided as he cut one of the steel cables with his crystalline blade.

Vlad was ripping at the slayer magic with every tool in his arsenal and was only half-listening to Winona when she suggested he take over control. His mind buzzed with far too many confused thoughts for a brief second before he understood what she was saying.

NO.

Vlad didn’t care if it was logical, or if it could solve their problem. He would never, ever take someone’s will from them like it had been taken from him. Ceasing to be autonomous was his absolute worst nightmare after the death of his loved ones, and he would never, ever inflict that on someone else.

He was, however, going to have to plant himself firmly in the passenger seat and probably buckle his seatbelt because they were fixing to ram another car.

Blood and silver! Vlad swore as energy flowed from him to Winona’s foot. Though he wouldn’t have minded using it to heal her, he knew why she was doing it and did his best to redirect it from the wound.

Physically, Vlad answered through gritted teeth. This may be close enough.

The problem with blood magic was that an energy manipulator like Vlad found it very easy to manipulate the magic found in his own blood. Plus, Jurriaan Leeuwen was standing on the grounds of his familiar home. He poured all the anger and hate that he could muster into activating the spell.

Instantly, he felt Jurriaan’s mind brush his own, and it took every ounce of willpower that he possessed not to shrink away from it. He hopped past, having no desire to touch Jurriaan’s thoughts and found the happy little spark that could only be May.

May! Pardon the intrusion, Vlad said, building walls around their conversation even as he did so. All that time spent practicing bending the meaning of slayer magic to suit his purposes really were paying off. And the fact that he had been the one to activate it gave him more control over what it meant. Besides, it was much easier to mentally connect with someone he already had a connection to, and he had to resist the urge to invite Bram to the mental group chat.

Jurriaan can’t hear us. It’s like a… VPN. You know a—never mind. No time! Don’t do anything stupid! We need to get him to release the magic. I was thinking—

Vlad cut himself off as Winona spoke to Jurriaan.

For his part, Jurriaan did not appreciate his mind being used as a chat app. He had plenty of mental defenses, but the fact that Vlad had activated the spell made dealing with it there problematic. He cursed, furious that he had not considered that the vampire would invite him to connect with his mind by personally activating the mind spell. It was an insane, desperate plan. Were they to have a mental battle, they both knew Jurriaan would win. He simply did not have the hindrances that Vlad had. No worry, no guilt, no regret, no sadness, no love. Only power and determination, and Jurriaan knew exactly where to shove the mental knife he would use on the vampire.

Now he had two of the castle’s inhabitants under the control of his compulsion spell. He could feel May’s glare, but he turned to face Winona as she crawled towards him. He would have considered the sight pathetic had he not been so focused on her words.

Jurriaan took a slight step back from May and Winona.

Ah, Vlad said, clicking the final piece of the puzzle of Bram’s father into place. It was something he had always suspected but had never actually had proof of. He could feel the roiling turmoil of Jurriaan Leeuwen’s mind outside his mental barriers. I pity him.

Bram paused in his mayhem, turning to see his father taking steps away from a crawling girl and a tiny mage. What the hell?

A roar interrupted his confusion, and he turned. A great dark-scaled dragon landed on the castle’s biggest tower and screamed her challenge to those attacking her hatchlings. Starless was careful with the Drakonii castle of course, but the old structure didn’t seem to mind bearing her weight. Several other roars joined her.

Bram yelled a war cry back.

Jurriaan Leeuwen must have planned for dragons, because just as one of the smaller dragons dropped from the snow-filled sky, something mechanical roared in reply. A modified harpoon punched its way through the dragon’s wings. The barb kept in in place as the operators of the large cannon-like weapon turned the wheel on the side, pulling the dragon towards their armed fellows.

“No!” Bram yelled, because he knew that dragon. His name was Strong Wind. He and his fire-mate had a clutch of eggs due to hatch in spring.

Bram turned and ran towards the dragon, barreling past slayer after slayer. Luka must have picked off a few of the people attacking the dragon as several dropped, but three others were poised to kill him as he crashed into the trees, bones breaking and wings ripping.

Pain flared in Vlad’s chest, and he sat up with a gasp. There were precious few magics that could take precedence over the energy that Jurriaan was dragging from him, but Vlad’s bond with Bram was one of them. Bram was going to get himself killed. He could use Bram’s energy to get himself to his companion, and Jurriaan would not be able to steal it as it was not his. Plus, once he was outside his castle, his connection to his ancestral magic would weaken. It should recognize Scarlet as the resident vampire should he die, then.

“Go!” Scarlet shouted even as her sire was scrambling to his feet.

He ran, the castle politely making stairs for him from the stones of the inner wall. Doing exactly what he had fussed at Bram for, Vlad leapt over the wall.

Sorry, sorry, sorry, Vlad said, racing past the trio glaring at one another. I’ll open the door. You bring him to his knees.

Vlad shoved against Jurriaan’s mental defenses as he ran, ducking around Jurriaan’s minions. He had originally planned to throw his pain, worry, and regret at the slayer, but those emotions weren’t strong enough. Instead, he poured his need to protect Bram into his efforts to break through the Jurriaan’s walls. He cared about Bram so much that he would rather die than live without him. It was ridiculous to be such good friends with a slayer, but this was the lifeblood of their bond. It wasn’t blood magic or slayer magic anymore. It had ceased to be that eons ago. It had changed, morphed as they grew from hatred to friendship. Vlad didn’t know who the original caster was, but he figured he or she must have known exactly who Bram and Vlad were. He or she had known this was going to happen and had written the sigils with that in mind. He often wondered if they hadn’t broken it long ago and had just reformed it into what it was now.

Vlad tackled Bram just as a dragon harpoon sliced through the air, nicking Vlad’s back.

“Get off,” growled Bram.

Vlad happily obliged, embracing Bram in his relief. He allowed the emotions he generally filed away to fill his mind, reveling in them.

Jurriaan’s defenses broke.

“Fighting,” Bram reminded Vlad, picking him up and moving him aside so he could kick the last remaining slayer crewing the dragon harpoon. “And you’re bleeding.”

He’s all yours, Vlad told May and Winona. Incapacitate him, please.
 
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Unfortunately for Alex, May had already tossed aside his phone in favour of focusing on what he was trying to do, otherwise he might have stopped to listen to him. Luckily, he was quickly distracted from his actions by Vlad touching against his mind, and wasn’t /that/ weird. He almost recoiled at first, but quickly realized it was somebody familiar and not another intrusion. He was still uncomfortable, but at least he had somebody who could tell him what was going on now.

He immediately paused what he was doing, the ominous foreboding sense in the air starting to dissipate as he stopped pouring his magic into himself and instead let it flow the way it normally did. He still felt a bit weird, like he was full of static electricity, but he was no longer on the verge of summoning a world ending primordial monster. He definitely needed to use some magic, though, before he really did overflow and the whole thing was out of his hands anyways.

Wait, what? He asked, or hoped he asked, trying to utilize this weird mental connection. He appreciated Vlad trying to fill him in on the plan and getting him to stop what /he/ had been planning, but he still had not actually been told what the plan /was/. He was left floundering as Vlad ran off and jumped off the balcony, which he had /just/ chastised May about doing not half an hour prior.

May would be exasperated if he wasn’t already kind of terrified. But at least the weird compulsion seemed to have slipped away and stopped, and May quickly jumped to his feet to fulfill Vlad’s orders of incapacitating the awful, evil man who started all of this—

Wait, incapacitate him how? He asked nervously, because he did not necessarily want to get overly close to Jurriaan. Somehow he doubted that Winona would have the same problem, but still.

Right, Winona. May quickly scurried over, untangling the chain that had been used to lead her there so he could wrap it around Jurriaan’s wrists instead, because that seemed to be a pretty good way to incapacitate somebody.
 
The compulsion to obey was still there, but it was muted now that the source had been compromised. Winona audibly whimpered in relief when May pulled the silver chain from her wrists. She had been ignoring the building pain as best she could, but any longer and she’d be losing function in her hands. Which she definitely needed.



She pulled herself forward with her arms, pushing with her good leg and reached out to grab Jurriaan around the ankle, slipping her hand beneath the leg of his pants to reach his skin.





Tighter, Winona told May. Wrap his arms to his chest. She didn’t want May to have to get his hands dirty, but she was a big fan of limiting Jurriaan’s ability to fight back physically, and she had minimal interest in handling the chain herself.



Get out of here, she told him, meaning he should leave both physically and mentally. Shouldn’t see this.



She was drawing Jurriaan into her own memories, a selection of torture and imprisonment and fear she’d been carefully curating in the peripheral of her conscience over the last week, and there was no reason to expose anyone else-



Wait. She had a better idea.



Bram, getting more excited about Devon’s new fangs than either Vlad or Devon himself. Vlad and Bram high-fiving and crowing over their success when they had assembled Winona’s loft bed correctly with only a handful of setbacks and Bram declaring them to be conquerors of ‘those tricky Swedes’. Bram attempting to explain football to her before deciding hockey might be easier to follow. Her own suspicious perusal of a box of old photos that she’d dug up when she had first moved into the townhouse, still quite wary of their friendship but unable to question it with several decades of photographic evidence. Bram excited to have guests over for Christmas dinner, even if those guests were a vampire, his werewolf husband, and their vampire boyfriend. When she’d first met them at the school and hadn’t even known who they were besides ‘headmaster’ and ‘guy who lurked around with the headmaster’ and assessed them as a singular, combined unit for the purpose of potential threat or ally evaluation, instead of two distinct individuals-



He’s always been better off without you, she repeated, this time without opening her mouth. And everybody knows it.



The Council, staring down at Gabriel as he proposed that Vlad and Bram should be named guardians of the twins, infuriated at their continued inability to make any sort of divide in the two’s relationship. Bram’s anger and panic anytime Vlad had been injured or might have been injured, Vlad’s identical reaction, Bram referring to Vlad as ‘my vampire’ without a shred of irony-



He’s going to chose ‘monsters’ over you, every single time, she told him, continuing the barrage.



The smell of the blood after it had been in the microwave as Bram carried it over to Vlad after making sure the temperature was right. The cold of the fridge when she’d stood with it open, deciding what she wanted to eat- And behind the chocolate milk, always enough pouches of blood for Vlad, but also for Winona and Devon and Alex, just in case. ‘No pressure, there’s no need to try it if you don’t want to or you’re not ready,’ Bram had told Winona when she’d expressed her confusion about why they needed so much blood on hand if only Vlad was drinking it and it was taking up room that she could have been being used for a second flavor of juice, ‘But it’s there for you if you’d like, no need to ask or feel weird about it or anything,’ and her pleasant surprise the next time she’d opened the fridge and heard the slight ‘click’ of the light go on to reveal that the blood had been relocated to another shelf and there was now room for another pitcher of juice.



The scent of Maria’s shampoo or perfume or whatever as she sat at her desk and told Winona, ‘Well, at least they’re a good influence on each other, I suppose,’ and the click-click-click of her nails against the gleaming wood as the woman had rolled her eyes in annoyance. The click-click-click of a game timer nearing its final buzzer as Alex loudly declared Vlad and Bram were no longer allowed to be on each other’s teams for anything that involved guessing, they had /way/ too many inside jokes between them and it was /not/ fair-



You don’t deserve any of the people you claimed to protect, she told him, doing nothing to disguise the malice she felt. You can try to pretend otherwise, but you know it too- You never hated Vlad because he was a vampire, you hated him because your son thought he was more of a human than he ever thought of you. And he was right.





Of course, Alex had known the dragons were nearby. And that, hypothetically speaking, they might be a useful defense- But they were also, like, going on endangered. They were supposed to be in hiding, protecting the cave and maybe protecting the humanoids if they ended up having to fall back and escape through the passages. Revealing themselves to a group of hunters and slayers who only had rumor of their existence was such an incredibly terrible idea that it had not even occurred to Alex.



He was so shocked by the roar behind him- and above him, and generally what felt like all around him- that he nearly fell over and toppled his gun with him.



“Holy shit,” Alex swore to himself as he scrambled upright, and he bit back more choice words when one of Starless’s kin was hit.



Luka moved fast to dispatch the hunters operating the harpoon, but it seemed unlikely there would only be one- Alex scanned quickly, trying to decide where he’d place another harpoon… There.



He shot quickly, before they could even put the weapon down into position- Most of his shots fell short, but he hit one of the men in front and he dropped his corner of the large box, and the side busted along the rocky ground.



But it could still be operational, he needed to- Where had that harpoon bolt come from that had glanced Vlad?



Shit.



“Luka, they’ve got a third harpoon,” he said with a panic once he’d found it, because that was way too far and with too many trees in the way. “Winona’s 10 o’clock, just beyond that second rise, they’ve just picked it up to move closer!”



There was nothing he could do about that, and nothing he could do to help Bram or Vlad or the downed dragon against their foes- He was way too worried about accidentally hitting one of them instead.



Speaking of worry- “May! Get back over the wall!” He didn’t even know if May could hear him. But at least he didn’t /look/ like he was going to be doing anything too stupid. Besides get way too close to Jurriaan for Alex’s comfort.



Instead he aimed back at the second harpoon and the men who’d been carrying it, hoping he could at least make sure that threat had been neutralized.
 
Luka cursed quietly in his mother tongue, earning a scolding from Esme.

“I see it,” Rue said. She quickly relayed the distance to Luka.

Seconds later, one of the slayers dropped to the ground. The remaining slayers quickly ducked into the trees, dragging the device with them. Luka cursed again, apparently deaf to his great-great-grandmother’s scolding.

“I can’t see them—Alex, do you see them?” Rue asked. “Do they have more? I would think they would have at least four.”

“They like that number,” Esme confirmed.

“There! Luka—”

Luka had already pulled the trigger.

Rue confirmed the kill and then groaned. “They must have figured out where we are. If we try to hit the others, we may hit a dragon. Alex, do you see either of the two groups?”

“Starless,” Scarlet said, speaking both audibly and mentally. “Can you see them?”

Starless was acting as general, guiding her clan in the battle from her vantage point on the castle. She scanned the area and relayed her findings to Scarlet.

“She says they are in the same place, just setting up in the woods. Bram and Vlad are dealing with one crew that brought down Strong Wind, but they are too far from the others.”

“Any ideas?” Rue asked.





Mentally, Vlad answered May.

Vlad was bouncing along next to Bram, which was not only freaky as heck but was unhelpful. He looked really and truly happy—not his usual contented neutral face, but an actual smile. Bram almost didn’t recognize him. Besides, last Bram checked, his castle was under attack and a madman had two of his kids.

“Are you high?” Bram asked, kicking a slayer in the ribs so that Vlad could finish him off. “Or did my father steal your body or something? He doesn’t smile this much, Dad.”

“It’s me,” Vlad said, slipping around Bram and heading for the downed dragon.

“He also doesn’t talk like a normal person,” Bram said, fending off another slayer. “What’s gotten into you?”

“Have I ever told you how much I appreciate you?”

Bram paused, looking over at Vlad with worry in his eyes. “How bad’s that wound? Are you dying—please don’t be dying.”

“I’m not dying,” Vlad assured Bram as he detached the harpoon from the cable and carefully pulled the harpoon through the wound. “You’re just my dearest friend.”

“What the hell?” Bram said. “Pretending to be oblivious of our friendship is kinda our thing. Why are you spelling it out?”

“Your wing is broken, Strong Wind.” Vlad glanced over at Bram. “We’re friends, then?”

“I am killing vampire hunters to save your sorry vampire ass! We’re best friends, you idiot!”

The dragon flicked his tail with amusement. It was a good distraction from the pain.

Seeing no other slayers attempting to kill Strong Wind, Bram turned to his companion. “Are you trying to tell me your brain chemistry is off and you need a hug?”

Bram didn’t really wait for a response. Vlad was seriously worrying him, and Bram wasn’t sure that Vlad was not thinking he was going to die. He hugged Vlad right there in the middle of the fight because dammit, his father was not taking his vampire from him.

Vlad wasn’t dying, but he was high on emotions he generally did not allow to govern his mind. But he had been privy to Winona’s memories, and he was practically glowing.

He threw the emotion at Jurriaan because Winona was right. He had always assumed that Jurriaan Leeuwen hated him for surviving and messing up his plans, but the slayer really hated him for being important to his son.

Across the battlefield, Jurriaan Leeuwen sank to his knees, gasping as he tried to clear the images and thoughts and feelings from his head. Bram was his son. His child, and Bram had killed him to save a vampire. He hated them all—this family his son had made for himself.

You don’t know love, Vlad snarled, sensing Jurriaan’s thoughts. Only possession—only control.

Get off your high horse, Jurriaan growled back. What do you know? What do any of you know? This child is a killing machine, the mage is some sort of monster, and you, you a parentless child who is still so desperate to prove he is worth something. How can any of them love any of you? Do they know what you are? Do they know what darkness lurks in your minds? Don’t pretend you’re better than me. They know I’m a monster, so they turn from me. When they find out what you are, they’ll turn from you just like they did from me. We’re the same, they just don’t know it, yet.
 
May quickly did as Winona asked, taking advantage of Jurriaan’s confusion to bind his wrists the way she instructed. He flinched back a bit when she told him to leave, hesitating for a good minute. He couldn’t just /leave/ her with him. Besides, he didn’t actually know how to cut off this weird mental link anyways. And the memories, while they started off horrible, soon became familiar, things that he remembered himself, and without thinking he threw his own into the mix. They were milder, almost subconscious, thoughts of how Bram and Vlad had accepted him into their family despite the fact that he had initially lied to them and infiltrated them as a spy. The fact that he cared for both of them just as much as he did his own father. The fact that they were both better parents than Jurriaan could ever hope to be.

But then the man tried lashing back, and the weird staticky feeling in May’s head grew thicker. He tried blinking rapidly as his vision started to grow fuzzy, but he only managed to get a few feet away from the man on the ground before his legs started to feel wobbly. He was lucky they were close to the gate, and he leaned against the wall surrounding the castle as he tried to think about what was happening, but it was like his thoughts were filled with cotton and he couldn’t sort through them.

This child is not a monster.

The words echoed through the mental link, and while they sounded like May, May was certain that he himself had not been the one to say them.

Human, you have harmed innocents and used foul magic upon my flesh. I would ask you explain yourself, but there is no point.

May blinked blearily, watching as his hand rose up despite him very pointedly not doing that, and the chains that were binding Jurriaan began to rattle, coming to life like snakes as they coiled further up from where May had bound him, wrapping instead around his throat and squeezing once menacingly as a warning.

“Men like you deserve no mercy, so I shall not waste time with it,” May said aloud, though he felt like he was watching somebody else move his body on autopilot, and none of the words coming out were actually his. Magic burned hot in his brain, and he tried to focus to let some of it out, but he couldn’t think.

“I shall give you one chance, to say your last words.” The chain tightened for a moment before loosening enough to actually allow him to speak clearly. “Unlike the mage you have violated with your blood spells, I truly am a monster, and I have no qualms displaying such to you.”
 
May and Vlad had both picked up on her tactic and helped carry it forward, and Winona spared a moment to be annoyed that they were literally bringing him down with ‘the power of love’ and bullshit like that- But it seemed to be working well enough, so she continued.



Safe to kill him yet, Winona asked. She knew there would be a preferable time to physically attack him, but he had dropped some of his magical protections and she would really like to stab him.



“Not pretending to be better,” Winona growled, pulling herself up more, and pulling a knife from her belt. “Also not /totally/ the same- I’m not dying today,” she listed as an example of their differences. She raised the knife to drive it forward into his gut-



what the f---



What in the actual hell was happening, was May doing that, what in the world-



Winona was afraid in a way she hadn’t been for a long time, but she kept her hold on Jurriaan and her knife and resisted the urge to flee and take May with her, and shake him until whatever was happening /stopped/ happening.



vlad help



She did what she could to squash down her growing panic and uncertainty, and while she managed to shield most her fear from Jurriaan, she couldn’t stop it from escaping as a plea to the older vampire.





“The group along the northern wall’s scattered, harpoon non-operational,” Alex reported, his hand steadier this time as he aimed at the retreating men’s backs.



That was the second harpoon down, and Vlad and Bram seemed to have the first in-hand.



But the third and fourth crews were still out there, missing a few members thanks to Luka, but presumably with their guns still in tact.



“Uh,” Alex thought aloud, no ideas particularly forthcoming. They could build a kite dragon to draw out the harpooners- Except there was not the time nor the materials, and finding the harpooners wasn’t the problem. They could have Vlad restore the magical defenses, except Alex didn’t even know if Vlad /could/ do that right now, and that would probably just strand everyone outside the gates…



May hadn’t been responding- which Alex was /not/ thinking about- so magical shenanigans weren’t likely to be available…



“Unless Scarlet can direct the twinkling lights to blind anyone trying to aim those things, I’m short on ideas that aren’t incredibly risky and/or have a low possibility of success,” he admitted. They couldn’t let the dragons fly until the harpoons were taken out, but taking out the harpoons seemed impossible without the advantages of flight and fire breathing.
 
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