Fanon:The De Crypt Family

This is my first fanon, so please have a little patience whilst I get to grips with the editor!

Introduction
''My name is Dracula De Crypt, and this book is the history of my family. I intend it to be a record of how I climbed to glory on the shoulders of my father and grandfather, and a record of where my children are heading. Read on, and know the secrets of the most important family you will ever meet. For I am confident this family will last the ages; how can it be otherwise? At the third generation I have already reached the top of the pile at my coven, and I am confident my children will take our name on from strength to strength. ''

''Do not expect this history to be written in blood - we are not the monsters of legend. Of course, we must feed, and the teams of Hunters and Baits keep our colonies supplied, but there is no death involved when we drink blood. The donors only give us a little of the precious liquid carried in thier veins before having thier memories erased and a safe return to the streets. Some who know that we exsist criticise us for this, say we need not feed at all. How ignorant they are! We take as little as we can, but we would die without it.''

''Death is inevitable. My grandparents are dead, one burned in the sun, the other withered away from old ages. My uncle died as a teenager, before my parents were married. These are natrual causes; I have never killed someone when feeding from them.''

''I apologize, I seem to have gone off-topic. I hope I will not do that very often, but I am old now, older than it is possible for you mortals to be, and even the immortal mind fades and becomes uncertain eventually. My story starts with the arrival of my grandparents in Aridia. They were poor, they were newly converted, and they were in love. How happy they must have been.''

Chapter One: Humble Beginnings
''These are my grandparents, Angua and Vince De Crypt. In the early days of our dynasty few records were kept. I struggle to understand how one can leave their family, their home, and not even record the reason why. I do not expect I will ever understand - I have never lived the kind of life they lived, I have never experienced the poverty they accepted as normal. I hope I never will. I remember my grandfather telling me once, when I was a toddler all those centuries ago, that moving to Aridia was meant to be a 'fresh start' for them. Why did they need a fresh start? What were they running from?''

''Those were less enlightend times, people were not as accepting then as they are now. Even in Aridia, in my grandparent's time, vampires and werewolves were creatures to be feared. My children and I can proudly walk down any street without fear of being attacked, but back then our kind had to hide behind locked doors and could only socialise with fellow creatures of the night. Maybe Angua and Vince lived somewhere even worse before they moved to Aridia, and had to leave in a hurry when thier neighbourhood turned on them. That would certainly explain why there are no pictures of thier childhood homes.''

''I don't even know who converted them to their supernatrual status. My grandmother was a werewolf; they age, of course, and during the day they look like anyone else. Maybe if she had fallen in love with someone else she could have lived privately and kept her secret to herself? Speculation is pointless. My grandfather was a vampire. You know, of course that we must sleep all day in a coffin, but you probably assume any coffin will do. In fact, our coffins are specially desgined to protect from the rays of sun. In primitive times they slept in normal coffins, and in an emergency even a cupboard will do. I have heard stories of vampires who survived the day covered only in a thin layer of dirt and gravel, because they could not seek proper shelter in time. The vampires did not survive unscathed, they were ill for many months. It is best to sleep in the cool, comfy embrance of a velvet lined coffin that has never been sullied by being buried in the dirt. The best coffins last decades, and when you finally enter the final sleep your coffin will be with then as well, as it is buried with you.''

''Of course, at the start of the story Vince is still alive, and his coffin still sat in the bedroom next to Angua's bed. Money was short and bills needed to be paid - Vince needed to get a job. It is often a struggle for vampires to find a job, simply because we cannot go out at night. If we are lucky we can get a job as a security guard, prehaps, but the pay is low and you cannot get promoted without being pushed into a day shift. Who wants to be a security guard forever? Luckily for Vince, the local Job Centre was little more understanding than most and he found a job in the local vampire coven.''

''Of course, no relationship is enitrely without trouble. My grandmother was desperate to have a child, but Vince was uncertain. The excuse he gave Angua was that he wanted to be in a more stable position, but in reality he was worried what the offspring of a vampire and a werewolf would be like. I think his worry was justified; at that time no such creature exisisted and thier understanding of genetics was less complete. We still have some way to go, of course, but we now know that if a Vampire or a Werewolf has a child it will be human. I am proof of that, as are my father and my children. We were all born human and were bitten as teenagers to become vampires, or werewolves. Of course, It is a well known fact that I am only half-human; my mother is an alien. That part of the story will be explained in more detail later.''

''I never met my grandmother, but by all accounts she was a strong willed woman. She knew how to get her way. I hope that trait has passed down through the generations, it would be no bad thing for my children to have a little of that iron will. With a little self-control we could keep the blood strong and pure, and my descendants could continue this book until it becomes a saga to last the ages.''

''Of course all the sagas have companions to accompy the hero. Angua bit a local woman called Rose Dai - but don't fret! They soon became firm friends, so Rose must have asked to be bitten. As time passes I grow more confident in this opinion; the reactions of others I have bitten confirm this. I admit, in my youth, when I was overcome with the excitement of being freshly converted to the legion of darkness, to biting those who did not wish to be bitten. I thought they would also feel the joy I feel when they discovered what they had become, but instead they shunned me. They purchased medicine to become human again, or they worked to become prominent in the coven and tried to stop my ascent up the hierarchy. They failed, of course, but they caused me much trouble and I had to had to get some of them removed. Do not judge me for this - responsibilty and power and conscience are far more intertwined than you realise. I have had centuries to regret foolish actions, do not stand in front of me with your handful of decades and tell me I was wrong to act this way.''

''So this is how it began. My grandparents moved to Aridia, my grandfather got work in the local coven. My grandmother wanted a child, but my grandfather was afraid. Friends were made, and a fresh start was made.''

Chapter Two: Vampires and Werewolves
''As I said previously, Vince was afriad of what children they could have. He worried that a vampire-werewolf hybrid child would be a monster of sorts, and would be rejected by even the vampire and werewolf communities. His marriage to Angua was already making career progression more difficult for him.The various differences of opinion between vampires and werewolves is well-documented, but thier origin is not. It's not true that the bite of a werewolf is deadly to vampires, but certainly something in thier nature means that they rarely, if ever, get along.''

''Its often been remarked that putting a werewolf and a vampire alone in a room together is like putting oil on a fire. How, then, did my grandparents end up together? This is something else lost to those years without record, but I have a half-memory of when my grandfather told me the story. When they first met, Angua was not a werewolf, and Vince was not a vampire. They were university students, living in the same dormitory. They barely noticed each other for a long time, but one night Vince was the victim of a random attack from a vampire. He was left for dead on the street, and would have died then had Angua not found him and called for an ambulance. By the end of the semester, they were engaged. After they were married, Angua was visiting her friend late at night when she discovered that her friend was partway through transforming into a werewolf. Disorientated and confused, her friend attacked Angua and turned her into a werewolf. It seems thier love was strong enough to cross the antipathy between vampires and werewolves, and they stayed together.''

''It was in his very last days that Vince told me that story, and I wish I could remember it better but I was young and foolish. I thought he would be there to tell me the story again next week, next month. This is one of the few disadvantages of being a vampire. Sooner or later you will find you have a friend, a lover, a family member who is mortal. They will age and they will leave you. You try to forget, but after the while you make new friends, and they are aging also. You will outlive so many of the people you love, and people wonder why vampires are dark - but how could we be otherwise? You can see a family multiply before your eyes, you can watch look at a mighty oak and remember the sapling, but you can't stop grieving for those you have lost. If we felt nothing when our friends died, we would be monsters. I am many things, but I am not a monster.''

''Again I have digressed from the main storyline - forgive me. ''

''Vince was frightend of having the child Angua was desperate for, but mother nature had other ideas. Angua fell pregnant multiple times, but each time the transformation from human to werewolf was too traumatic and she lost the child. Finally, with a lot of support from Vince and the local hospital, she managed to carry a pregnancy to term.'' 

''This pregnancy, of course, was my father, Vlad De Crypt. From the first moment they looked at my father, it was obvious he was no monster, neithier was he a vampire. In the evening, when he failed to transform, they discovered he was not a werewolf eithier. Vlad had his father's black hair and his mother's brown eyes. ''

''I love the hope a new child represents, I love the moment when you first hold a child and look into its eyes, and see all the future, all the maybes and possibilities. This loud little armful of tears and smiles could be the next prime minister, or a surgeon, or a homemaker, you just don't know. It's been too long since I held a child, mine are all grown, and thier grandchildren too. I suppose I must have great-grandchildren out in the world somewhere, but they don't want to know me. Families look forward, to the future, and I am the past, a living fossil. My latest wife is gone and I sit here alone in my mansion with empty arms. Your children are your legacy, but that legacy will run on without you and leave you looking after it longingly. ''

''My grandparent's friendship group had expanded to include a good witch, a plantsim, and a human who was trying to get into the lifestyle. Angua persuaded Gretchen to share the secrets of magic with her and began to pursue the path of light. She wanted to be a good witch and break free of the sterotype for a vampire's wife.''

''Angua felt that vampires could be a force for good, and of course she was right. She realised we are not inherently evil, no more so than any other person.''

Chapter Three: Births and Birthdays
 ''My father had a happy, if unusual, childhood. He grew up used to the idea that a person might sleep all day, or turn into a wolf at night. His birthdays were frequented by supernatrual beings and he had few human friends. Indeed, my father struggled to fit amoung the daylight people and longed for the day when he could work in the coven like his father. It has been years beyond count since I have even pretended to be like those who live in the sunlight. We must all, as children, go to school, but for some of us it is merely an ordeal to live through until the glorious day when you first feel the sensation of running your tongue over fangs rather than ordinary incisors. I've have often commented on how unfair it is children cannot become vampires.''

''As a toddler my father kept a strange schedule. Angua, who didn't work, had got into the habit of sleeping partly during the day and partly during the night so that she could meet Vince when he left for and came home from work. Of course they wanted my father to spend as much time with Vince as he could, so Vlad was out to bed at odd hours of the day and night.''

''I remember a story my father told me once, of when he was a toddler and barely able to walk. I don't suppose he actually remembers the event himself, he must have been told the story by his parents. Angua was in the living room, studying and researching spells, and waiting for the sun to set. What an exciting time of day that must have been! I have known werewolves, but I have not lived with them. Imagine, for Vlad, what it must have been like - your father is about to come to life, and your mother is about to change into something more akin to an animal than a human. In this story Vlad took advantage of his mother's distraction to go find his father. As I said, the sun had not yet set, so VInce slept so deep it would have been nearly impossible to wake him, which explains how Vlad managed to get the coffin open without disturbing him. My father spoke of the incredible peace he saw on Vince's face, and the puzzling absence of any fear at seeing his father like this. Would you have been afraid? To find your father cold, silent, and being unable to rouse him? Nonetheless, a few minutes later when the sun set and Vince woke, he found his son curled up in his arms, sleeping the way any human toddler would.''



''My father was not an only child - for a short time, he had a brother, Damien. Damien was born only a couple days after Vlad started school, and he died only a couple of days before Vlad left for University. I wish I knew more of genetics, so I could explain why Damien grew up so quickly and Vlad was an ordinary human. The fact remains that Damien must of inherited something of the vampire or werewolf genes so that he was a teenager when he died, despite only being old enough to be a child. I am getting ahead of myself - Damien lived for many years, you need to hear a little of those first.'' ''Damien's black hair grew long and thick, and it seemed obvious to Angua he was destined to be a werewolf. Strangely, he had a slightly feminine look about him. By now Angua and Vince had more money, although not much, as Vince had worked his way up to be a hunter at the coven, and they managed to scrape together enough to send the boys to private school.''

''The Hunter's at the coven do have a certain mystique about them, and I am proud to say I was one for a short time. Indeed, everyone who has worked thier way into the government of the coven has spent some time as a Hunter. It takes a great deal of physical strength and I admire my grandfather for making a career out it. Admittedly he didnt have the talents to make it further up the hierarchy, but that is not his fault. Such people are born rather than made, and even for them it takes many years of hard work to suceed. Anyone who suceeds easily is only two short steps away from failure.''

''Look at them in the picture, so happy, so carefree. It will last a little longer, I suppose, they had many happy years. They have had happy years since. My uncle would have wanted them to be happy.''

Chapter Four
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TO BE CONTINUED

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