WORK IN PROGRESS
        Category – Buffy/Other
        Disclaimer – I don’t own any of this.
        Distribution – Please take it, just tell me.
        Rating - R
        Summary – Why did Dracula really come to town? Alternate to season premiere.
        Dedication – For Patti, you are the best cure in the world for writer’s block! Thank you!
        Author’s Notes –  Please realize that this is by no means a statement about Romanian history or the real Vlad Dracul, who many in Romania consider a hero even today. I suspect from what I have learned of the real Prince Vlad Tepes that as a brilliant ruler and warrior he allowed the horror stories about him to spread to fear about him and help secure the freedom of his people. I have taken the worst of history and the worst of the legends, many of which blend together today, and melded them with the Dracula we saw on Buffy to create the Dracula of this story.
        Author’s Notes 2 – Vlad Dracul had two wives. The names vary from source to source. Bram Stoker’s Dracula called one of them Elisabeta. I use Elisabeta the name of his second wife, who he married as part of a treaty with the King of Hungary.
 
 

    There is darkness in the world beyond the comprehension of the average person. From the quiet, dark alleyways in Kiev to the loud, smoky bars in Auckland to the deceptively bright, noisy streets of Las Vegas there lurk creatures that possess unthinkable measures of cruelty and manipulation.
    There are monsters in this world who have been called fables, myths and old wives’ tales. Those who know them to be real fear them, hunt them or join them. Those who don’t simply live their lives in an ignorant bliss, barring a first-hand lesson to educate them on their misconceptions.
    But what most people don’t know, don’t realize, even among those who fight or fear the monsters in the dark, is that those demons pale in comparison to the real terrors of the world. For it’s not the demons who walk the earth, but the people along side them who define the true boundaries of evil. It is the cruelty of man and man alone who has outdone the blood-thirstiest vampire, the most savage werewolf, the most dangerous of all the devil’s monstrous tools.
    Mankind has killed spirits, minds, hearts, souls and bodies as painfully and as slowly as anything recreated in fairy tales or ancient myths. And so it is in light of this fact that it becomes evident why the soulless corpse of a savage, brutal ruler converted into a powerful vampire would be as evil a force as was ever released upon the earth.
    Those who did not know him in life might assume a man of noble, righteous blood lost his soul to the devil himself when he was turned into the vampire known throughout the world as Count Dracula. Those who did know him would recognize the truth: Prince Vlad Dracul never had a soul to begin with.
 

     There were few slayers that Dracula ever concerned himself with. Oh, he’d had fun with a handful of the teenage damsels over the past 500 years, playing with their minds and hearts until both snapped under the weight of his presence and twisted mind games. But, they’d always sought him out in their quests to make their marks upon the world. Never had he made any attempt to hunt them, conquer them, until now.
     He’d ignored the news of the previous slayer’s death and the birth of a new warrior-girl just over five years ago. It was nothing new. If he took notice of every sniveling chosen-one’s call to duty he’d never have time to do anything else. The girls tended to drop like flies.
    When he heard the new girl was still alive after a year and had managed to close the Hellmouth he’d been mildly surprised, but thought little of it. After all, Hellmouths had been closed by other slayers and she was hardly the only one to make her first birthday.
    By the time she hit her fourth year, word reached him that she was still alive and, with the help of her friends, had managed to decimate most of the former Hellmouth’s demonic activity. He’d taken pause at that. She was proving herself more of a challenge to the vampire population than he’d expected. It was a rare surprise, but still, he largely ignored the horror stories he heard of the American killer.
    It was scarcely six months later when he felt the change. They’d all felt it, a dark stirring deep within their soulless bodies. It was unlike anything any of them had ever experienced before. It was the awakening of a primal passion somewhere within the mystical realm of their world. It was, he would soon find out, the slayer’s communion with her eldest ancestor. His attention was piqued.
    It was not, however, until the tales of this masterful killer of his people were accompanied by a picture that he ordered his home be moved to the very bowels of hell itself, to Sunnydale.
 
 

    “She is magnificent,” He marveled to his henchman as they watched the scene play out on the street below. “There were no exaggerations of her ferocity in the tales I’ve heard.”
    “She is quite a creature,” the henchman replied.
    “No, no she is more than just a mere creature. She’s above that. She is a force of nature itself, violent and savage yet passionate and young. She is like no other I have ever seen. There are no words for what she is,” the Dark Prince replied to the henchman.
    On the street below, under the watchful eye of the Romanian vampire, the slayer and her mortal boyfriend took on vampire after vampire, besting each one with little difficulty.
    “You know,” she sighed, driving her stake through the heart of yet another infantile vampire, “This is getting so old that I can’t even think up any witty repartee. That’s just sad.”
    “Look at it this way, Buff,” Riley said as he flipped a vampire that had tried to attack him from behind, “you’re getting a good, long workout and this isn’t bad practice.”
    “Riley, this is easier than beating Giles in a fight. Workout is not the word I’d use,” Buffy replied.
    As she slammed a fairly small vampire into the wall behind him, her head snapped up suddenly and her eyes darted around the rooftops above.
    There was nothing visible, but Buffy’s senses ran far deeper than sight. There was something there. She knew it. She felt it.
    It was very old and very powerful, probably the oldest vampire she’d ever felt and that was saying something. But there was something more there than just the unmistakable presence of an ancient evil. There was something hauntingly familiar. It drew her in, calling her, in a way she’d never known.
    “Buffy, look out!” Riley shouted, tackling the vampire she’d smashed into the wall earlier just before he’d had the chance to do away with the Slayer.
    Buffy tore her eyes away from the rooftop just in time to see her boyfriend dust the last of her would-be attackers.
    “What happened, Buff?” He asked concerned as he rose to his feet and took her gently by the arm. “Those guys were easy kills. You said so yourself and you just zoned out.”
    Buffy stared into his eyes, at a total loss for words for a moment. “I’m sorry, Riley. I don’t know what happened. I just, I thought I felt something.”
    “Felt something?” He asked.
    She nodded, “Something old, something very dark.”
    “I don’t like the sound of that,” Riley huffed. “Let’s get you inside where it’s safe.”
    Normally, the slayer would have reminded him that she was far from the helpless child he treated her like at times, but for once she said nothing. She let him lead her gently away from the alley as she stared at the rooftop above; unable to shake the feeling that something was about to happen.
 
 

    “Forgive me, my Prince, but I can’t see how it is possible,” the henchman said, holding the door open for his lord as the two entered the newly relocated castle.
    “It doesn’t matter how it is possible, Bruno. It simply is,” the elder vampire replied with the smallest of smiles on his face. “She felt us. She felt me. She knew.”
   “We were hundreds of feet away, Prince. I’ve never heard of any slayer having that sort of ability before. Not even this slayer could possibly have that sort of range,” Bruno said cautiously.
    “I suspect, my friend, that she never has before. I believe she was even more surprised than we were that she felt us,” he mused as he inspected some archaic weaponry.
    “My Prince, I’m almost afraid to ask this, but you don’t think it’s her, do you? There is a resemblance, to be sure, but she’s the slayer,” Bruno said quietly.
    Vlad Dracul sliced his hand with the rusted weapon he held, enjoying the feeling of his own blood dripping through his fingers, and looked up at his long-time friend.
    “I do not think it is her, Bruno. I know it is her,” he smiled. “And soon, she will know it, too.”
 
 

    “I don’t know how else to explain it, Will. It was just weird. Gave me the wiggins,” Buffy said with a shiver.
    “You mustn’t brush this off so quickly, Buffy,” Giles admonished. “Whatever this was distracted you to the point where your life was endangered.”
    “Yeah,” Willow chimed in. “We can’t let that happen again, Buffy. It’s too dangerous.”
    “Look guys, I know that,” Buffy sighed as she flopped down onto Giles’ sofa. “It won’t happen again. I was just surprised. I’m prepared-girl now.”
    “That may be so,” Giles mused, selecting a book, “but that doesn’t change that you felt something. It behooves us to attempt to determine what this creature is before he makes his presence known to you. Where did you sense him, Buffy?”
    “That’s the weird thing,” she sighed. “Whatever I sensed had to be at least two or three hundred feet away. I never have that kind of range. The only time I even came close to that was when we called on the first slayer.”
    Giles’ eyebrows shot up, “Three hundred feet? Good gracious. Are you certain?”
    “As sure as I am that Spike isn’t going sun tanning any time soon,” she replied sarcastically.
    “Ha, bloody, ha,” Spike grumbled from the corner.
    “If you ask me,” he continued, “your slayer sense is in need of a little repair, love. I haven’t heard anything about one of the ancients coming to town and not even you can sense a demon a flipping football field away.”
    “I know what I felt,” she insisted. “It was very old and dark and…”
    “And what, Buffy?” Willow asked.
    “And familiar,” she finished. “Like I’d felt it before. Like I knew it. But I’ve never felt anything that old before. I’d remember that.”
    “I don’t like this at all, Buffy,” Giles frowned. “Take special care patrolling. I’ll do my best to research active demons over three-hundred years old.”
    Buffy nodded absently, “Focus on vampires, Giles. I think it was a vampire.”
    “Not bloody likely,” Spike muttered. “I still say you’ve had one too many demons smash that pretty little head of yours.”
    “Can I stake him, Giles? Please?” Buffy asked.
    “Sadly, no. We may need him for undercover work later. Perhaps it would be best if you go rest for a while, Buffy. You want to be at the very top of your game tonight,” Giles suggested.
    ”Yeah, I’m headed home in just a minute. Wills, you staying here?” Buffy asked.
    Willow nodded. “I’m research girl. I’ll call Xand to help out. If we don’t get anywhere with the book angle then I’ll call Tara we’ll figure this thing out in a more paranormal way. See? Everything is under control. You go rest.”
    “You’ll let me know as soon as you find something?” Buffy asked.
    “Yup, now go,” Willow smiled. “You have a long night ahead of you.”