Claimed

authors Note: Many thanks to my beta Robert for his work on this fic! This is the last chapter (although I do have an epilogue written which I will post next week) Sorry to see it end, but this just frees me up for more ideas!! so yay!

Chapter 20 Desolation and Decay

The Council spoke silently to one another, conversing only in their minds so that Draco could not hear their words. It was times like these that Draco almost wished he spent more of his time honing his new skills and less time in Harry’s bed. Almost.

It was a moot point, however, when it came to the Council; Harry was one of the few who was powerful enough to hear their ancient thoughts. It made him wonder if he would ever be as powerful as his mate or if there was something else about Harry that made him special, and more powerful than the rest. If it was only the wizard blood that made him such an ominous opponent, then it seemed Draco should have the same advantages, but that didn’t seem to be the case. Though – to be fair – Harry was months ahead of him in his training and much more used to his newly undead form.

“Would you speak your thoughts out loud for Merlin’s sake before I go insane!” Draco shouted, ignoring the many looks he got from the Council member varying from annoyance to amusement at his outburst.

“It is not our intention to upset you, Draco,” Elizabeth soothed, turning her ancient eyes on him.

“I just need to know what we’re doing here. We need to leave, we need to go after Snape and get Harry back!” Draco exclaimed. He was exasperated with the calm and casual nature the vampire council exuded. He wanted action and results: he wanted his Harry back.

“We can’t just ambush the golden palace as you tried to ambush our mountain,” Montblanc scoffed haughtily. “We are not children.”

Draco narrowed his eyes and gave his most withering Malfoy sneer. “I am no child, and that is my mate whose fate you are all deciding. We must retrieve him!”

Elizabeth made to answer Draco, her mouth opening to reveal delicate pearly white fangs, when a sudden gasp from Laurel halted her words. “What is it sister?”

Laurel’s eyes blinked rapidly and colored over in milky white and when she spoke, her voice was booming and resonated through the hall, making the crystal chandelier sing with tintinnabulations above their head. “There has been a change,” she announced in that wall shaking voice. “Something irrevocable has happened within our Kiss and the Chosen One is at the heart of it.”

“What has happened, sister?” Asriel asked, his own voice a raspy whisper in comparison to the echo of Laurel’s, which still lingered among them.

Her milky white eyes blinked again and faded back into their previous obsidian and she shook her head sadly. “I can see no more. There was a mighty wooden bed and the Chosen One was strapped to it, the one you call Snape hovered nearby and I could see the Chosen one through Crispan’s eyes. The king leers at our savior as if he is a fine delicacy to be enjoyed,” she added angrily, the echoing boom of her voice fading back into the twinkling bell-like sound Draco was used to.

Draco clenched his fist and gritted his teeth at her words. “He cannot take him. Harry is mine!” he hissed, clearly fiercer than he had thought because several of the Council winced away from him.

In unison the vampires closed their eyes and bowed their heads, speaking silently once more, but before Draco could burst into a renewed fit, they looked up at him once more, seemingly resolved.

“Our entire army will be sent for him, with you as their leader,” Elizabeth told him. “Tipal and Laurel will go with you, and the rest of us will remain here to watch after our flock.”

Draco blanched, not expecting such an immediate response and pleased that he would not have to argue. The entire army at his disposal was far more than he would have bargained for. He bowed to the Council and left the glittering hall with Laurel and Tipal at his flanks.

Upon crossing the mighty wrought iron gates at the entrance of the Amethyst Tower, Draco found the army already assembled and awaiting his direction. It was a smaller group than he had imagined when he thought of an army, only five or six hundred gathered before him, but the force behind that meager number could have taken down an army of ten times as many humans.

The trouble was, of course, that they were not fighting humans.

“We march upon the Golden Palace. The traitorous King has our savior, and we will win him back!” Draco shouted and was pleased to hear the thrumming cheer that greeted his ears. “We will destroy all who prevent us from claiming Harry back, and that includes the murderer they call a king!”

With a signal from Tipal, the army nodded in understanding, and then in unison they turned away to face the tunnel entrance and filed away with a march that reminded Draco of thunder claps.

“We will get him back,” Laurel assured him. “Unscathed and just as perfect as when he was taken from us.”

Draco sighed; letting an ounce of the grief he had pooling in his still heart spill out and through his body. He had to get Harry back; he had to be with him once again: see him, feel him, smell him, taste him. Harry was the most important thing in his life and he would need him to help raise their child.

As he let his hand graze over his still flat stomach, he thought of the baby inside and of how much Harry would love it and how perfect a father he would be. He tried to ignore Laurel’s probing gaze, and let his hand fall to his side at once, but it was too late.

Her obsidian eyes widened and flickered from Draco’s face to his abdomen and back again. “You’re not?” she asked, her face showing a mixture of wonder and disbelief.

“I need to get Harry back,” Draco whispered. “I don’t know what’s happening and I need him.”

“I have never heard of such a thing. How can you be with child if your body is dead?” she asked, his voice a pleading thing.

Draco could only shake his head. “I don’t know. All I know is that it is Harry’s child – as well as my child – and I will do everything I can to make sure he sees it born.

A slow curl of a smile curled on Laurel’s lips and she shook her head. “You do not carry Harry’s child within you.”

Frowning deeply, he glared at her with narrowed eyes. “What do you mean? I can feel it.”

Laurel laughed, her whole body shaking with it. “You did not let me finish. I said you do not carry Harry’s child, but rather his children. It is twins you carry, Draco. One boy and one girl, lovely as the sun is bright.”

“How can you see them? How could you know that?” Draco asked, begging her to continue.

“I have a sight that far surpasses that of humans and even of most vampires. I can see your beautiful children now that I know to look for them,” she said, still smiling with her words, but her smile quickly faded. “You should not have come with us, you should have stayed behind and safe within our tower walls.”

Draco rolled his eyes in annoyance with her coddling and shook his head. “I can’t stay behind when the life of my mate lies on the other side of this mountain.”

Laurel sighed then – a heavy, hollow sound – and said no more. Draco let her keep her silence as they marched behind their army of vampire assassins. He preferred to have the time to think of how he would rescue his love from the clutches of a conniving king and a sneaky potions master.

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Harry looked up into the face of the king, his shimmering golden hair falling around his naked body like a curtain. He studied the man’s eyebrows, and how they arched into points that made him look fierce and firm. He absorbed his smooth pointed nose and his pale pouting lips and his high-sculpted cheekbones.

The king had a thin neck, one that he recalled wanting to snap on several occasions, but suddenly found that unnecessary as he stared into Crispan’s pitch black eyes. “Do you still love me?” Harry asked, but he only got a rasping choking response.

“How about want… do you still want me?” Harry asked, trying for another angle as he felt the power returning to his limps. He broke his binds with an easy snap of his wrists and put his weight into flipping his and the king’s position; he found it a surprisingly easy thing to do.

Harry pinned Crispan’s arms above him, those obsidian eyes now showing the first signs of fear Harry had seen in the man since his first demonstration of magic. His nude body writhed between Harry’s thighs and he stilled them with a wave of his hand, paralyzing the king with his magic.

He memorized Crispan’s body, every inch of pale luminescent flesh; right down to the throbbing erection that laid flat against his stomach. He watched it all very carefully as the King’s toenails turned black, and that same deathly color began inching its way up his body.

“You put all your power into that last bite didn’t you?” Harry asked, a smirking grin lighting his face.

The King didn’t respond though, as he was too busy choking on his own tongue to let words pass his lips.

“I took your power from you, Crispan,” Harry informed him in a singsong voice. “I would use it against you now, but I think that might be a bit redundant.”

He continued to watch and smile as the blackened flesh crept higher and higher, some of the original pieces turning gray, then white, and finally to a powdery ash. Crispan no longer had toes, or feet or even ankles, and as Harry looked on, the King was slowly dying, turning into what he would have been if he were human still: ash.

Harry took great pleasure in the King’s self inflicted demise, running his finger through the graying powder now coating Crispan’s knees and lower thighs. He rubbed the ash between his fingers and held it over the King’s head, letting the particles fall down onto his face like morbid snow.

“You tried to rob me of my future; you tried to take me away from Draco and my child,” he growled, the smirk that had graced his face now a wicked and vicious thing. “I will revel in your death and I hope that it is as agonizing as it looks.”

The King’s mouth opened as if to talk, but no sound came out save an indescribable choking that Harry imagined must have been meant as a scream.

“You shouldn’t have been so greedy. You should have been content with your kingdom and your palace and your people. You shouldn’t have sought to claim me when I am already claimed by another far better than you and far purer than your tarnished heart has ever been and far more loving than you could ever dream of being,” he spat.

The light that typically reflected in Crispan’s obsidian eyes began to fade and Harry slapped his hand across the King’s face, wiping the faint black residue from the back of his hand. “No, you can’t lose consciousness yet. I want you to feel this, feel the pain of decay, feel the agony of your mistakes and your hundreds of years catching up with you all at once. Feel it all!” he demanded, growling.

Harry stood then, towering over the slowly decaying King, the blackened death now reaching his chest and bleeding into his neck. Moments later Crispan’s eyes widened as the ash covered his face and seconds later his eyes were just thick gray powder as well. Harry howled, a fierce and piercing noise, and he kicked the pile of smoldering ruin that had been his captor, sending a smoky wave of ash across the marble floor.

With a heavy sigh of relief he stepped down, letting the pleasure of his victory wash over him and fill him before banishing it away, and looked for an exit. He found it quickly enough, left the room, leaving the now-ruined King behind him, and fled.

It wasn’t even three corridors away from his final exit that he found another villain waiting to pounce. Snape lurked in a shadowy corner and balked when he saw Harry, still nude, in the hall. “Where is Crispan?” he demanded.

A delicious idea passed through Harry’s anxious mind and he smiled. “Our King asked me to seek you out, he has a reward for you,” he told him, letting his voice become as silky and seductive as it could be.

Snape’s eyes, which Harry used to think of as black until he saw those of the Council and the King, lit up with glee. “Where is he?” Snape asked hurriedly.

Harry nodded toward the way he had just come. “Still in the bedchamber.”

Snape made a move to follow Harry but then his eyes narrowed suspiciously. “I assumed you would still be with him there, he said you would wish to copulate upon being bound to him.”

Harry snickered and rolled his eyes. “Copulate? Who says copulate?” and he left Snape standing in the corridor gaping after him as he made his way back to the bedchamber. “Are you coming or am I to tell the King you refused to accompany me?”

Snape hurried to Harry’s side and kept pace with him as best he could along the winding marble halls. “Did he say what my prize would be?”

He had to conceal his annoyance with the man who was his mentor turned captor. “He didn’t say,” Harry replied abruptly.

Snape stopped short and narrowed his eyes once more. “You’re not acting as he said you would,” he told Harry, letting his suspicious gaze linger over Harry’s nude body, the lust evident on his face just behind his distrust in Harry’s behavior.

With a quick and precise movement he pushed Snape to the wall, pressing his body against the potion master’s thick black robes. He let his hand wander, tracing the muscled skin underneath them until he reached the waistband of his trousers and he let his fingers delay there, promising things he would never deliver upon.

“If you must know, dear Professor, my King acted as though he might share me with you. I’m trying not to get my hopes up as I am bound to my King’s favor, not my own. His wish is my command and I do hope he wishes for me to ravish you,” he purred against Snape’s ear, relishing in the sound of his old mentor melting to his whim. “I dare not try to persuade him though. If he knew how much I desired you he might hurt you,” he added with a delicate pout.

He pulled back then, just as it seemed Snape was about to lean in and capture his protruding lip, and he continued his journey through the corridors with Snape at his side like a salivating puppy.

“So you’re not bound to him completely?” Snape asked after few moments of silence passed between them.

“I am, but I have always had an affection for you, Severus,” he replied, giving the man the full weight of his emerald gaze. “Before Draco came along, I would have chosen you as my own,” he assured him, making a show of grimacing at his beloved’s name.

“Truly?” Snape asked in a whisper, and Harry had to try not to laugh at how easily the man was won over by delicate words and false promises. He imagined the King had done much the same to Snape and his poor human heart just couldn’t take it.

Harry turned again and rested his palm against Snape’s cheek and looked deep into his eyes. “Would I lie to you?” he asked in his most seductive tenor.

“When the King turns me into one of you, I could win you back!” he shouted, spurned into action by Harry’s words. “I could do to you as he did and make you mine. We could be happy together, Harry.”

“Keep that thought far from the front of your mind, Sev. The King has murdered for less,” he warned.

Snape sighed and nodded somberly before following Harry once again. When they had finally reached the bedchamber, the same room where the ashen remains of the tyrant King laid sprawled along the bed and floor, he paused, his hand on the knob, and turned to his old mentor one last time.

“I cannot go inside, he bids me to remain here until he calls me. I think he means to change you this very moment as reward for bringing me to him,” Harry whispered.

Severus’s breathing hitched and he smiled excitedly. “I will be like you soon.”

Letting a single finger trail along Snape’s sallow face, Harry let his smile match with his old friend and mentor’s smile. He felt a twinge of guilt for what he was about to do to the man who had once been the only friend Harry had at the Manor. That guilt was swept away as soon as he thought of that same man - a man who professed his love for Harry, who stood up to Draco in his honor when Draco was being stubborn and petulant and who was first honest with him about his fate – taking him from his love and his child and giving him over to that fiend of a King. All love for Severus was lost in that singular act and he kissed the man’s forehead roughly and sealed his doom.

Opening the doors he ushered a bewildered Snape into the darkened hall and a moment later locked the doors behind him, with Snape inside, and himself in the hall.

He heard a confused call for the King, then a hollow scream as he found Crispan’s remains, and another when he reached the door to find it locked and unmoving to him or his wand. “Harry!” he screamed though the massive gilded door. “Let me out, the King is dead!”

“I know,” he called back. “You will soon follow.”

With that he turned, ignoring the Potion Masters begging protests and pleas for his life and he sought out the King’s guard.

The man he found didn’t look terribly surprised to see Harry as he rounded the corner until he saw the distress in Harry’s face as he held out his hands to the Captain of the Guard for help. “Please, you must come. That vile wizard Snape has murdered the King! I’ve locked him inside the bedchamber, but you must get him before he escapes!”

The Captain paled and ran at full sprint the way Harry had come, leaving Harry to calmly leave the palace unchallenged. He could hear the guard assembling toward the bedchamber, he could hear them break down the door and he listened closely to the sounds of Snape screaming as they ripped him apart and siphoned his blood from his traitorous veins. He was happy to hear him fight back, wounding at least four of the guard in the melee, but in the end, the last thing Harry heard before stepping through the massive oak doors, was Snape’s final heartbeat.

Upon leaving the palace and stepping into the road that led to the expansive village a smile alighted his face and he broke into a run. At the end of the lane stood a gaping but ecstatic looking Draco and a snickering Laurel at his side, and behind them an army of hundreds. The townspeople of the Vampire city gathered and gawked at the display of a naked man running and scooping up the slight form of his vampire lover.

Harry laughed joyously as he kissed his beloved, a rough crashing of lips against Draco’s pink and perfect ones. When he finally set him down, the boy pouted at him petulantly. “Well, it seems you can take care of yourself and don’t need saving after all,” Draco muttered.

“You’re my hero regardless,” Harry told him truthfully and kissed him once more before falling to his knees, lifting Draco’s shirt and kissing his lover’s still flat stomach. “You and our child kept me from falling for Crispan’s trap. My love for you both outweighed his power and killed him in the process.”

“He’s dead?” Draco asked, pulling Harry back up to his own lips.

“He and Snape both. I think it’s time to reform the Kiss under the Council’s guidance and for us to go home,” Harry told him. “I can’t wait to tell mother of our child!”

Draco would have blushed if he could have, but instead he just looked over at Harry nervously. “Harry, about that. We need to talk.”

“About what?” Harry asked, genuinely concerned. “Is our child okay?”

“Our child is fine, Harry… it’s just… the word child only refers to one. I think the word children would be more appropriate,” Draco noted, grinning wildly as Harry’s eyes went wide with surprise and happiness.

Authors Note: So, fitting end? I already have the epilogue written, and an idea for a potential sequel, but I would love to hear what you guys would like to see. So for now I will leave you with these Snape and Crispan action figures with life-like burning options. Just hit that button on their back and watch them scream in agony. (Knight in Shining Vampire Draco and Not So Damsel in Distress Harry sold separately)