Fic: Hunted

[csi_sanders1129]

Title: Hunted
Chapters: 2/5
Author: csi_sanders1129
Genre: Hurt/Comfort. Drama. Adventure. Romance. Established Relationship.
Ratings: T
Word Count: 3,237
Pairings/Characters: Dracula/Johnny
Synopsis: In which a familiar vampire hunter makes the mistake of targeting Johnny to get to Dracula and things spiral out of everyone's control.
Comments: This has been in progress for months now and I'm so so so glad it's finally finished. First try at a Hotel Transylvania fic, hopefully no one is to OOC. Takes some liberties with vampire lore not mentioned in the movie. Characters not mine, please enjoy! Comments are awesome.

Chapter 1 |

Johnny wakes to blurry vision and an awful lingering taste in his mouth. When his vision finally fades back into focus, he finds that he's in a dark, stone room. It's windowless, so he has no idea how long it's been since those thugs took him, hours or days. He struggles to sit up, surprised that they've left him loose - but, then, what kind of threat could he pose? - and finds that everything hurts.

"Ugh," he groans, as he makes it to the nearest wall, has to use it to help him get to his feet. A castle, he thinks, but not Dracula's. They've brought him to a castle. Not a bad choice, defensively, he has to admit.

Whatever they drugged him with makes him feel slow and off-balance, so he keeps one hand on the wall while he circles the room. It seems like it takes forever, and in the darkness, he's not even sure how far he's gone. He does finally happen upon a heavy wooden door, though, set back a little further than the rest of the wall, but it doesn't budge. No matter how hard he tries.

His phone's gone, as is his backpack. He's got nothing without those things. But, if any of it was left behind, he's sure Drac will find it and come for him.

"They don't know who they're messing with," he tells himself. But he's pretty sure that they do. Why else would they have taken his blood? He's sure they did that much. Dracula did it once, just took a little, so he could leave the mark on his neck. He'd done it to warn off a tribe of vampires that had spent time at the Hotel a few weeks back, who had taken a little too much interest in the human in their midst for both his and Drac's liking. He'd felt weak after, even from just that little bit. It felt a lot like this.

The door opens suddenly, filling the room with light that's blinding to his eyes after the total darkness. He winces against it, trying to make out the faces of those who enter, and he recognizes the blurry outlines of the people who'd tackled him in the Haunted Forest.

"Good, you're awake," one of them says, catching his arms, twisting them painfully behind his back.

Johnny squirms and tries to wiggle his way to freedom, but to no avail. The hulking thug doesn't even bother holding on tighter. He slumps down in temporary defeat and demands, "What do you want with me?"

A grin crosses his captor's face, as he calmly replies that, "Oh, you? You're the vampire bait."

Yeah, they definitely know who they're dealing with.

He's force-marched out of the room and through a winding maze of cobwebbed hallways and up and down countless cracked stone steps. He trips on a broken one, stumbles and smashes a nice gash into his knee, which just feels awesome, especially when Tweedledee and Tweedledum don't seem to care and continue to drag him up a few more steps before he gets his feet under him again.

They come to a stop just inside of a big room - ballroom, maybe, he thinks - and the two thugs shove him forward and leave the room, closing the heavy, wooden doors firmly behind them. He tries those, too, but finds they've been securely locked. He throws himself against them a time or two, but all that gets him is a sore shoulder.

"You won't get away."

The voice comes from the other side of the room and Jonathan spins around to find the leader of the little gang of fools who'd taken him lurking by a stone dais.

"Your plan won't work, you know," he lies, hoping he can downplay Dracula's feelings enough to convince this maniac that he didn't take anyone of importance. He doubts it will be successful, but he has to try. "I'm just a convenient food source, is all. He doesn't care about me. He won't come."

"We took your blood," the man says, seemingly unconcerned with Johnny's warning.

Unable to resist the urge to roll his eyes at the glaringly obvious observation, Johnny quips back a snarky, "No, really? I hadn't noticed."

"We left it for him to find. Enough for him to think you'd been severely injured, but not killed. Enough to make him mad, so that he'd come after you."

Johnny blinks, stunned by the cold, calculating way the man talks and thinks, even the way the guy looks at him, like he's committed some sort of heinous crime merely by existing. Stunned by the realization that, yeah, that'll work. "Why would you want to do that?"

"Because," he says, as calmly as if they were discussing something as trivial as the weather, "anger makes people do stupid things. It makes vampire-vermin do stupider things."

"And this isn't stupid?" Johnny challenges. "Baiting a vampire is a smart thing to do now?"

"It's a hazard of the job, being a vampire hunter."

Johnny squares his shoulders, stands a little straighter, as the threat registers. The name he'd heard earlier, as he lost consciousness comes back to him: Van Helsing. Everyone knows that name. In all the not-quite-stories he's heard about vampires before he'd known they were real, the Van Helsing name has always been there, too, playing the brave hero to the villainous vampire. His hands ball into fists at his sides, and he says, firmly believing, "You'll never hurt him."

But the man laughs at him. As reactions go, it's the last thing Jonathan expected. "Boy, do you know where we are?" Before Johnny can reply, he gestures to the wall above the door where Johnny entered. There's a portrait hanging there. Aged with time and dust, and old scorch marks have ruined the bottom corner, but Johnny knows it. He's seen it before.

It hits him like a punch to the gut, staring at the painting of Dracula and Martha. "We're... we're in Castle Lubov."

"We've rebuilt portions, but from the outside, it still appears to be in ruins. Now it is called Castle Van Helsing," he explains, looking annoyingly smug, "I've claimed it as my base, since it was my great grandfather's finest victory."

"Victory!?" Johnny demands, so angry that he finds the courage to go stalking up to the hunter, getting right up in his face despite the inherent risk of provoking the man. "You call what happened back then a victory? It wasn't even a fight! A mob burned this place down and killed an innocent woman. I'd call your great-grandfather a coward, not a victor."

The man's hand curls around his neck, holds tight, an infuriated scowl on his face. "Who do you think sent those concerned townsfolk to the castle that night? Who do you think told them about the monstrous secret hidden in Castle Lubov?"

"They weren't hurting anybody," Johnny defends, because he knows it's just as true now as it was then. Dracula has never hurt anyone, never fed off of a person (excepting Johnny himself (but that was for his protection, so technically...)), and he doubts the lovely Lady Lubov harmed any humans, either. Even if they might have deserved it. "If anyone's a monster here, I'd say it's you."

The fingers tighten around his neck, the nails biting into his skin. He's short of breath now, and he's gasping for air when the hand releases him, letting him drop to his knees. The man, this Van Helsing descendant, casually strolls away from him, gazing up at the picture on the opposite wall. "Vampire kind must be destroyed," he says, "And you as well, anyone found helping their cause, involved with them, will pay the same price."

Johnny coughs and staggers to his feet, waving a hand toward the general direction of outside once he gets his breath back. "Dude," he says, "this is Transylvania. Almost everyone here is super into vampires. All the tourists, all the locals. You can't stop everyone."

"I only have to stop you."

Johnny stays silent, waiting for an explanation.

"My family has already taken Count Dracula's wife from him. Now he's got you. And if I take you, then surely he will retaliate, and that is all I'll need to make the people turn on him, just as they did before. They're ignorant of the threat he poses, but they won't be that way much longer."

He realizes that Van Helsing must not know about Mavis, or else she would be at risk, as well. Another threat against humankind, another tool to use against her father. He silently vows to keep her existence a secret.

"So, what?" he asks, "You're just going to kill me? I'm human, aren't I a little out of season for you?"

"Anyone who associates with vampire scum is just as bad as vampire scum. Worse, even. You should know better. Your instincts should be screaming at you to get away from that snakes nest of evil creatures and yet you continue to stay!"

But of all the 'evil creatures' he's met, none has terrified him nearly as much as the human before him. "Why are they evil? Just because you say so?" He demands, "Hardly anyone's even known they've existed for the last hundred years, so clearly they're not doing much harm. They've been hiding from you. You can terrify Count Dracula into more than a century of hiding and he's the monster?"

Before he can answer, the big doors at the end of the room open, and the two thugs step in. One nods to their boss, and though the meaning of it is lost on Johnny, Van Helsing sighs and ushers them forward.

"Hold him," he orders, and within a moment, Johnny finds himself once again trapped between the two hulking figures. "And yes, my boy, vampires will always be monsters for as long as they're allowed to exist."

Johnny doesn't know where the stake came from (wooden, but tipped in pointed silver), but if this is what's going to happen to him, if this is what Dracula is going to find when (not if, but when) he shows up, he knows it going to be bad.

Dracula will kill them all or die trying.

***
The rickety, old hearse screeches to a stop right at the doors of Castle Lubov.

It had been a smart move coming this way. They'd all been expecting a bat, and here he had a car. They'd all been expecting him to come alone, but a couple of phone calls had earned him companions - and he wonders if they even knew about mummies and werewolves and frankensteins and invisible men. It's easy to catch the handful of guards unaware with that element of surprise on their side. It's almost like they have the upper hand, like this will be easy.

"Come on," Dracula calls to his friends as they storm the door.

But he knows it won't be.

He knows the Van Helsing's, their merciless tactics and die-hard beliefs. He knows that Johnny isn't safe, won't be safe until Dracula's got him back and Van Helsing is dealt with.

It's clear, however, that no one had been overly concerned with Dracula getting into the ruined castle. The lack of guards once they're inside proves that much. And that? That is worrisome.

"Hey, Drac," Wayne says, sniffing for the scent of their human friend. "I've got something, but it splits."

"Is it safe to split up?" Griffin asks, and he's met with numerous responses both for and against. However, the group finally decides that Wayne and Murray will follow one trail, and Frank, Griffin and Dracula will follow the stronger one.

They're heading off towards what used to be, Dracula recalls, the magnificent ballroom where he and Martha were married, where they said their vows and danced together amongst friends and family. The sinking feeling in his stomach seems to imply that what he'll find there now will be more on par with his last time here, when he watched it burn.

Frank claps a reassuring hand on his shoulder as he moves ahead, but its effect is lost as the memories of this place hit him. There's nothing good left here and he doubts that's going to change.

"Up here," Frank calls, and Dracula turns a corner to find the heavy, old doors firmly shut. It only takes one good hit for Frank to bust through, and then things get a little crazy. A duo of well-muscled, well-armed thugs are waiting on the other side, and they waste no time in attacking.

However, they were likely not anticipating having to fight anything other than vampires. They don't have the muscles or the weapons to take down Frank, and Griffin proves to be a helpful distraction in the fight, too.

This leaves Dracula free to rush to the other side of the room. To the familiar form slumped across the stone table.

"Johnny," he breathes, sure that his zing will be fine so long as he can somehow manage to get them all out of here in one piece. He zooms over, hands settling on Johnny's shoulders, rolling the boy off of his side to his back. And then he stumbles away as his world implodes.

There's a stake.

A stake through Johnny's heart.

His shirt is soaked with blood, so much blood, and for the first time in his long, long, long life, the sight of blood makes him feel nauseatingly sick. He forces himself to move forward again, one hand slowly stroking the side of Johnny's cold, pale face.

"No, no, no," he's saying, over and over again. "This can't be... No, Jonathan, my love, no."

Johnny's not moving, not talking, not doing any of the things that make him Johnny and Dracula feels himself flash into and out of his fits of red, jaw-snapping rage more times than he can keep track of. He can barely focus and it takes him an inordinate amount of time to realize that the reason his vision keeps blurring out of focus is because he's crying. Crying over this stupid human boy who stole his heart when he didn't even think he had one anymore.

This time, when he snaps into his furious mode, he stays there. Pulls the bloody stake out of Johnny's lifeless chest and swears that he'll put it in Van Helsing if it's the last thing he does. After all, he thinks, recalling what he'd told Johnny when he'd asked about them, what wouldn't a stake kill?

He turns to find his friends, the four of them, all there, staring at the sight before them with varying degrees of disbelief and anger on their faces (even the invisible ones, he's sure).

"Drac..."

"Don't," he says, voice cold and deceptively calm. "Just... Take him home. Make sure Mavis is safe."

"If that's what you want," Wayne says, but he reaches out, catches Dracula's arm before he can go storming off to do something stupid. "But, Drac, you don't have to..."

"I do."

"You don't have to do this alone," Wayne finishes. "We're here for you, with you. Whatever you need."

It's enough to snap Dracula out of rage mode. "I need you to take Johnny home for me," he says, sadly. "I will deal with Van Helsing. He won't have the chance to hurt anyone else I care for."

Wayne lets him go this time, and he's dimly aware of the others as they move toward Johnny's body on the stone table, and he barely hears their hushed whispers as they work out how they're going to do this. He has a job of his own to do, and nothing can distract him.

He steps into the hallway outside of the ballroom and bellows, "Van Helsing!" as loudly as possible. The ruins of the castle shake with the volume of it, and he hears the crash-bang of fallen objects here and there.

"Van Helsing! If you want me so bad, come and get me."

Nothing.

"You coward, face me!"

No one comes.

"What?" He challenges, because he doesn't know what he's supposed to do if he can't end this now. How is he supposed to do anything knowing that that bastard is still out there breathing, living, existing when Johnny isn't. "You can only take out vampires with angry mobs? You can only kill innocent humans?"

More silence.

He'll have to hunt his prey down, then. He'll turn into his bat and hunt and hunt and hunt until he's found whatever rock Van Helsing is hiding under and that's where it will end. He'll...

There's a hand on his shoulder, then, and he whirls around in expectation of an attack from his enemy, but finds no one there. "Griffin," he breathes, lowering the bloody stake. "What is it?"

"Johnny... he's alive. Barely."

There's this painful lurch in his chest, and he stares in disbelief at the invisible man. "What? How?" How can Johnny be alive after being stabbed through the heart, after losing so much blood?

The invisible hand tugs at his arm, urging him to follow. And he does. The stake clatters, forgotten, to the floor and they rush back into the ballroom.

"The stake must have just missed his heart. He's still breathing, but it's slow and shallow," Wayne explains, making room for Dracula amongst the circle that has formed around the table. "Drac, could you turn him?"

Dracula isn't sure. He's only done it once before, when he turned Martha. She'd asked him, begged him, and he'd finally given in, but she hadn't been dying at the time. He doesn't know what effect that will have on the process, if Johnny even has enough blood left in his system for the poison in his to work.

"I... I can try," he says, raising his own wrist to his mouth and sinking his fangs in deeply. Dark red drops run down his arm to drip on the stone table, mixing with Johnny's congealing blood. He lets his arm hover over the hole in Johnny's chest, watches the blood flow into the fresh wound long after he feels dizzy with the effects of giving so much away.

It only stops when he sways forward and nearly falls, but Murray catches him and sits him down. "Whoa. You okay there, buddy?"

He's not. He's dizzy and weirdly cold and despite everything that's happening, he just wants to lay down and pass out. But he can't. "Take him home," he says again. "We won't know if it worked until later. And Van Helsing's still..."

"Forget Van Helsing, Drac," Griffin tries."You're coming back with us. You're too weak to fight him right now and it seems the chicken has flown the coop, anyhow. We'll find him later, okay?"

Dracula wants to argue with them. Wants to stay here and hunt down the threat to his family before he can try anything else to hurt them. But Griffin's right. He's in no shape for a fight and Johnny needs him. If he does turn, he'll need to be there to help him through it. If he doesn't... well, if he doesn't, then he'll have plenty of time to hunt that bastard Van Helsing down.

"Alright, alright," he says, letting Griffin and Wayne help him to his feet while Frank carefully carries Johnny's motionless body. "Let's go home."

-- Chapter 3