The Never Ending Story

Back in the Dream World, Vlad was getting impatient. The person he was waiting for hadn't shown up yet, and he was beginning to worry that they wouldn't.

There was nothing around him but he felt strangely claustrophobic. Jumping to his feet, he decided to explore a little.

Skirting around the patches of sunlight scattered about, he moved out of the clearing and into the denser forest.

The silence was almost unbearable. After almost an hour of wandering aimlessly, passing tree after identical tree, Vlad saw something.

It was a figure, cloaked in a black jacket and standing stock still, staring at him. His eyes widened, and he ran towards the figure.

As he approached the figure, it turned and walked away from him.
"Hey," Vlad shouted, following it, "I need to talk to you, I need your help!"
The cloaked figure kept walking, followed by the Grand High Vampire, until it came to a stop beside....

The entrance to a cave. He could see a black and violet coffin gleaming just inside. So this was Ingrid's dream-world hideout.

He turned to thank the figure.

But it had gone. Or, rather, it had turned into the pile of dust now on the floor. Spinning on the spot, Vlad saw that the coffin was now occupied.

Ingrid now sat upright in it, aiming a crossbow.

"Duck," she commanded, firing the arrow straight for Vlad's head. As the arrow flew past his ear, Vlad turned to see who Ingrid was firing at: slayers.

There were only two of them, and she shot them down easily, filling the air with the scent of blood.

Then she levelled it at her brother's head.

"What are you doing here?"

"We need to talk, Ingrid." Vlad stepped into the cave, "The others are going to kill you, and I can't let that happen."
Ingrid laughed, "Little brother, you and you're family-values, you really must learn to shake them off every once in a while."

"This isn't a joke, Ingrid!" he snapped.

"I'm not joking." she smirked back. "I don't need your help."

"Erin nearly killed you." he reminded her sadly. Her eyes sparked with fury.

"She's a freak. A half-fang freak, Vlad. She's not a real threat."
Ingrid smiled as she noted her brother wince at she insulted Erin: this was going to be easier than she had thought.

"Sooner or later, word will get out what she is and she's going to get slain. You can't protect her from everyone."

"I can try" he snarled, baring his fangs.

"You'll fail" she growled. "Even if you got the whole Council on your side, someone, somewhere, will find a way to get to her."

She saw the spark of an ides light in his eyes, and she smirked internally. The plan was set.

Vlad shook his head slightly, he knew that he could never win Ingrid over, his sister was stubborn to the last. Collapsing, the world went black again. The young vampire woke in a hospital bed.

He sat bolt upright and threw off the sheet that had been covering his face.

"What am I doing here?" he cried, gesturing to the wires, tubes, and suspiciously blank heart moniter.

The eyes of all of the nearby staff turned to regard him in shock, and a nearby Mr Brannagh dropped to the floor as the mind-wipe set in again.

He looked to the only friendly face in the room that was still conscious, "Mitchell, why exactly am in a hospital?" He tugged at the wires, removing them from his body, before trying to stand up.

"They were worried" he said simply. "Then the hospital pronounced you dead."

"Ahh..." he breathed.

"That could be bad."
A Doctor swung the door open, panting, "the matron said he was awake, I needed to-" she stopped mid-sentence, staring open-mouthed at the boy who was talking to the porter and whom she had pronounced dead 20 minutes previously.

He gave a kind of sheepish grin and a wave. She screamed in terror, and ran back the way she had come.

"Well that could have gone better" he muttered.

"We need to go, before this gets too big." Grabbing a bag, Mitchell took out a card and handed it to a pale nurse before leaving. Vlad walked out of the ward, catching the smile of the pale nurse.

"She's not going to kill them all, is she?" he whispered to Mitchell. The other vampire did not reply.

"I've got an idea," announced Vlad back in the TARDIS, "we need to get to the High Council."
"Surely Ingrid will be expecting that," countered Adam from the balcony, "we need to hide somewhere."
"No, we need the Council to help us, before it's too late."

He didn't want them to know that it had been Ingrid who had given him the idea, when she had mentioned the Council back in the dream world. He didn't want them knowing he had been to the dream world at all. In fact, he doubted any of them even knew about it, as it was reserved for pure blooded vampires only; not even half fangs could go there.

The Doctor danced around the console and the room shook, a rasping sound filling the air.
When it stopped, the Timelord flung the doors open grandly.

They had landed inside a huge hall, carved of black granite. A long black varnished table stood in the middle, occupied by twelve pale faced vampires.

"The High Council, I assume," smiled the Doctor as the group disembarked.
Upon seeing Vlad, the assembled vampires tensed.

Then, one by one, they stood up and bowed deeply.

The others raised their eyebrows, and Vlad pinched the bridge of his nose, embarassed.

"No time for formalities" he told them quickly.

He flitted to the 'throne' at the top of the room and called to assemble the whole Council.

"First, I need your word" he told them. "That you will stand by my decisions on this matter."

"We exist to serve the Chosen One and the Predictum Impaver." said a dark-haired man near the end of the table.

"Okay then" he muttered. He nodded to Mitchell, who passed him the book, and read aloud from the last page.

Once he had finished, the whole Council stared in shock.

"Who is this second Chosen One?" asked a blonde-haired man, stunned.

Vlad gestured for Erin to come over.

She waved sheepishly at the room full of vampires.

"Erin," Vlad put an arm around the half-fang, "Is the most powerful vampire I've ever known, and she will rule with me. Understood?"

"No," shouted a bald man from the back of the room, "I will not be ruled by a woman, let alone a half-fang." This earned a few cheers.

Vlad's eyes narrowed, and he nodded to Erin, who nervously held out her palm, and summoned a ball of glowing purple light. She gritted her teeth as it singed her hand, but it kept growing, until it exploded into a thousand shards of light, shattering along the table. They skittered down the table and stopped just short of the vampire who had made the comment. He cringed away from them.

No-one spoke out again as Vlad explained the plan.

Meanwhile, the slayers were surrounding the building.

"OK," called Jonno over a walkie-talkie, applying a charge to the hinges of the thick doors, "A team are go. Let's do this."

"Do we have their positions?" came the crackly voice of Mina through his headset.

"Right!" he said quickly, slipping on the thermal goggles. "About sixteen vamps, four humans, and two... I don't know what they are" he said, looking at the two doubly hot figures near the edge of the room.

"Watch out for them, then. Remember the plan?"

"Go in and grab..." he swallowed quickly. "Grab... Erin, and hold her as a hostage."

"Right."

"3..2..1.." Jonno stepped forward, "GO!"

Suddenly, they were under attack, Vlad opened a door and pushed his friends inside, "Stay here," he instructed.

"No way!" snapped Adam, Mitchell and River at the same time.

"Wait, where's Erin?" he called.

"Good question." called Jonno's voice. Vlad spun around to see the slayer holding a stake to his girlfriend's neck.

"Why does this keep happening?" snapped Erin.

"Let. her. go," Vlad growled through clenched teeth. Behind the vampire, a slayer edged closer until he was within staking-distance.

Erin called out a warning, and he spun around just in time to catch the stake before it sunk into his back. He twisted the slayer around, in the perfect position to break his neck.

"Let her go" he repeated icily. "Or he dies."

Mina put a hand on her son's shoulder, "Do it," she ordered moving in to whisper, "kill her, remember the plan."
Jonno shook his head quickly before tightening his grip on Erin.

"Let him go, or she dies" he countered, though his voice shook.

He pushed the stake in slightly, causing Erin to scream in pain and both Vlad and Jonno to wince slightly. Vlad had a pained expression as he considered giving in.

"Jonno, please don't do this" Erin said softly.

The hand holding the stake to her throat shook.

He tried to stay strong. She was a monster, he told himself, she was a killer, but he caught her gaze, he eyes were pleading and she looked so....human.

He dropped the stake.

Across the room, Vlad dropped the other slayer, after relieving him of his stake and burning it.

Erin ran to Vlad as they fought of a new wave of slayers.

The fight didn't take long, and together they had the first wave of attackers unconscious within minutes.

Furious, Mina grabbed a crossbow, aiming it at Erin's non-beating heart.

She pulled the trigger. Perfect shot.

"Ingrid?" breathed Erin as the vampire, armed with a stake, appeared in front of her.