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Vlad frowns.
The security systems installed in each of his residences are state-of-the-art and, with a little assistance from Skulker, have been programmed to ping with ecto-signatures that he’d like to know are in his vicinity.
Daniel is, of course, on the top of that list, although the reasons for his being there are both numerous and complicated.
He has also, according to the screen, crossed into the outer boundaries of Vlad’s Amity Park property, but barely moved more than a few feet in the nearly two minutes since.
Not his usual modus operandii, and certainly not the behavior expected of either a planned or unplanned visit. If he was here to talk to Vlad about something, the boy was usually extremely direct about it, and it he were pulling a prank, he should be pulling it and beating a hasty, sneaky retreat.
How very strange.
A quick glance shows no another anomalies, no other breaches in the perimeter, so he’s not here pursuing a ghost or serving as a distraction for his friends to pull some kind of ridiculous stunt of their own, either.
Very well, he’ll simply have to investigate himself.
A touch of invisibility and intangibility and Vlad’s outside in an instant.
Even knowing where Daniel is, however, it takes a surprisingly long time to locate him. The evening is growing dark, even with the nearby street lamps and the light that spills out of his mansion.
The boy’s tucked away around one of the brick pillars of his large and imposing cast iron fence, and deliberately making himself look small.
Hiding, Vlad thinks, but if it’s from him, Daniel’s picked a terrible place to do it – he’s clearly visible from any window on this side of the house. But fairly well hidden from the street, Vlad realizes, as Daniel peers around, clearly worried that someone might be there.
No one is.
A quick sweep confirms it: there are no threats - ghostly, human, or otherwise – yet Daniel looks scared.
Something is wrong.
“Daniel,” he hisses out of an overabundance of caution, keeping one eye on the road.
There is no response, no sign that Daniel hears him. He frowns, and touches down, melting back into visibility less than ten feet away from him, and still, there is no response.
He strides forward, and as he closes the last few feet between them, stops short as he realizes that Daniel’s speaking.
He’s speaking, but Vlad can’t make out the words. It’s all a low jumble of sounds, slurring together, and he finally decides that Daniel’s not trying to talk to him after all.
“Daniel,” he says, and reaches forward to grab his arm.
Daniel flinches, and falls back, flailing.
Vlad watches in first confusion and then alarm as he scrambles backward, pressed so far against the brick that his shirt is pulled halfway off and he either doesn’t seem to notice or care.
“What’s all this?” Vlad demands. “What’s going on?”
The boy stares at him with huge, unblinking eyes. He’s breathing far too rapidly, t-shirt fluttering against his chest as he pants.
Then he’s speaking again, or at least, it seems as if he’s speaking, but the words still make no sense.
Vlad takes another step forward and Daniel stumbles away, lurching unsteadily on his feet as he moves away and then all but dives for one of the nearby bushes, a huge dark leafy thing offering cover from nearly all angles.
Vlad’s eyes go very wide as he realizes that something here is very, very wrong - even more wrong than he originally thought - but he doesn’t have any idea how to go about figuring it out if Daniel doesn’t start explaining himself any time soon.
That’s when he starts to hear sobbing from beneath the bush.
Slowly, very slowly, Vlad kneels down.
Once he’s low enough that the long, damp grass makes a mess of his pant legs, he peers into the darkness. Daniel is huddled in a miserable ball, shaking arms wrapped around his legs, continuing to mumble to himself as he rocks back and forth.
“It’s just me,” Vlad assures him, although since he’s still unsure of the issue here, he doesn’t actually know whether this comes as any comfort.
Thankfully, Daniel doesn’t move, except to curl in on himself even further, fingers digging into jeans that, Vlad now notices with stiffening shoulders, have been scraped through, bloody, at the knee.
“Daniel, look at me.”
Bright green eyes appear in the darkness, unblinking, unfocused, and too bright.
Far, far too bright.
And besides, Vlad finally realizes, he’s still in his human form. His eyes shouldn’t be shining or green at all.
“Why are you here?”
Daniel is looking at him, he thinks – his eyes are, at least, fixed in his direction – but there’s a strange swirling quality to them, not unlike the ambient patterns of the Ghost Zone, that he’s never seen there before.
Daniel’s mouth opens, as if to speak, but he does not answer.
“What happened?” Vlad demands, and Daniel flinches, pulls himself in tighter.
As his hand moves, he reveals fresh scratches along his arm, in the distinctive pattern of human fingernails, and a dark mark disappearing up his sleeve that’s already starting to bruise.
All of a sudden, pieces fall into place, make sense of what hadn’t been clear before – an altogether different sort of danger than the one Daniel was accustomed to facing in this city. Not ghosts, but people. Not supernatural powers, but mundane drugs that could incapacitate a person just as thoroughly as an overshadowing.
Vlad sees red.
Vlad needs to know who did this. He needs to know now.
“Who did this to you?”
He grabs his arm, shakes it.
Daniel whimpers, struggles to get away, but between Vlad and the overgrown foliage behind him, there’s nowhere to go. At least, not without using any ghost powers and those seem to be increasingly beyond him.
“Who?” Vlad demands again.
But Daniel just begins to cry in response.
“Pl-please,” he whispers, and it’s the first coherent word Vlad’s heard.
He stops, suddenly, horrified to realize what he’s doing.
Daniel is in no fit state to give him answers. Demanding them when he’s like this will only make matters worse.
Information will have to wait. Acting upon that information will have to wait even longer.
Vlad closes his eyes, takes in a deep breath.
What’s more important right now, what is in fact of the utmost importance, is the fact that Daniel is here right now, that he is hurt, and that Vlad is the only one who can do something about that.
He’s going to do something about that.
He pulls Daniel into a hug,
Immediately, there’s a whine in the back of Daniel’s throat, and he tries to push Vlad away with arms that are frighteningly weak and uncoordinated.
“Alright, alright,” Vlad says, making what he hopes are comforting noises as he continues to pull Daniel closer to him.
“Nnn-”
He drags him up out of the dirt, out of the bushes, a gawky, unwieldy tangle of teenager’s limbs.
“Isn’t that better?” he asks, securing him safely in his arms.
He can feel the boy shaking against him, feel him breathing far too quickly. His skin, where it’s exposed to the night air, is cold and clammy to the touch, shimmering with a sheen of sweat.
“Let’s get you inside, then, hmm, little badger?”
The weak protests stop, then, and Daniel turns very slowly and clumsily in his arms to look up at him. Blinks with wild, green eyes.
“Vla-?”
Vlad swallows hard as trembling fingers reach for the lapel of his suit jacket, bury themselves there.
“Yes, Daniel,” he says.
Tears begin welling in his too-bright eyes, start spilling, warm and salty onto his cheeks, and he does nothing to try to stop them.
“H-help me,” he sobs. “Hel- ple- pleas-”
It takes Vlad a moment to find his voice, but then he’s quick to reply, “Of course. Of course I’ll help you.”
He looks up at his mansion, warm light spilling out of all the windows. Thinks of Daniel, somehow finding his way to this place even in this condition, coming here, to him, when he knew he was in trouble.
There was a time Vlad didn’t think he’d ever receive that kind of trust from anyone ever again.
“You made it,” he says, and the boy’s fingers clutch at him a little tighter. He adjusts his hold, ensuring that there’s no way he’ll drop Daniel on the way inside. There’s no protest this time. Daniel simply lays his head against Vlad’s chest and lets himself be carried away.
“You’re safe now,” Vlad says.
Watches, as Daniel’s eyes slide half closed, as he begins mumbling again, as his limbs begin to twitch beyond his control.
“You’re safe,” he says again, whispering into his ear as he turns them invisible and launches them into the air, whisking them inside.
Everything he’ll need is there – beyond a guest suite three times larger than Daniel’s bedroom with an en suite bath that will be both accessible and comfortable for him even in this state, it will be the work of only a few minutes to start running tests on blood samples to see what’s pumping through his system, to start whatever treatment will be most effective for ridding him of it safely. And to start his own personal security network tracing the boy’s movements backward through the night to see where this mess started.
Treating Daniel is still the first priority, of course, but Vlad is extremely aware of just how barely contained his own rage is, simmering at the surface of his skin, contained, at the moment, only by the boy in his arms.
He will make sure that Daniel is taken care of.
And then.
And then he will also make sure that this problem is taken care of, and that Daniel is safe from this ever happening again.