Title: Dark Inklings
Author: Jmaria
Rating: FR-15
Disclaimer: Joss owns all things Buffyverse, Christine owns all things Darkverse. I merely mash em together.
Summary: Two worlds of hunters collide, and each seems to bring the other a bit of the salvation that was needed.
A/N: Okay, this idea wiggled into my head while I was trying to do 31 Part Deux. Set after Dark Celebration (even though I haven't actually finished reading it - or Destiny, Secret, Demon or Hunger - and I don't even own Possession yet (I'm broke like that)). I really like for them all to be together because I rather like some better than others. I kinda have the main pairings in my head and they are going to be established characters from the Dark Series (obviously not the Hunters from the unread novels but I will be pulling from the handy-dandy family trees provided in said novels). Also, in a lifetime long, long ago, I once wrote OC Carpathian fic - I have no clue where they are at but it was about one of those lost families of Carpathians and their human/psychic lifemates. One even featured a daring elevator shaft rescue. Sigh. The good old days.
A/N2: Also, Im kinda going to allude to the fact that certain other Dark hunters exist - I dont own them either.

Dark Inklings

Prologue 1: The Summons of the First Slayer to the Carpathian Mountains

Victoria Louise Daniels had lived a very sheltered life. From the tender age of six months to the age of sixteen she'd been raised by a man who would teach her the lore of the vampire slayer. She learned at his knee, so to speak, until she watched him die by the hands of the Harbingers of the First Evil.

On that Day, from then on to be capitalized forever as that Day, Victoria Louise Daniels ceased to exist. It wasn't Victoria or Vicki that Rupert Giles brought back with him to Sunnydale, California, it was Vi. No last name required. She was a potential who's expiration had suddenly skyrocketed from at least a few years to possibly months and weeks at best.

And then that Night happened. The Night Buffy told them all that she was going to make them all slayers. It was like the sheriff deputizing every person able to lift a gun in all those lame Westerns her old watcher used to well, watch. The oh-shit-bars had been deployed and she'd been given a special perk package. Sure, she could beat up guys three times her size, she could heal faster than most people and her expiration date had risen slightly. But they'd lost so many that night, so many friends and allies hadn't made it out of that crater that had been Sunnydale.

But she had. She and Rona and at least a dozen more had survived and all over the world, girls were waking up stronger, and they were one of many instead of the Chosen One.

Out of the Sunnydale Survivors, Rona and Dawn had been her closest friends. Kit and Carlos had rounded them out to an uneven five. In the past six years the two slayers and three watchers often found themselves going up against the hordes of exuberant mini-slayers and new and inept watchers instead of the forces of evil. The world was theirs and the older members of the Council had given them a limited carte blanch. While Rona, Kit and Carlos all took that to mean play nice with the nicer demons and don't get caught killing the baddies, Dawn had taken that to mean go out and mingle with the good, the bad, and the bumpy forehead-ed. Somewhere along the way, Vi had gotten stuck being her conscience and her bodyguard. Not that she minded too much, Dawn always gave her at least one really good fight and damn good time.

Her role in protecting the three month younger girl had now brought her to the forest covered mountain region smack dab in the middle of the Slavic speaking countries. Dawn had been here doing research on Dracula. Apparently the undead creature was calling himself that had showed up in Sunnydale a few years before the First had had His hissy fit on the Hellmouth. Dawn had been geeked, apparently learning that the Mister Bela Lugosi wanna-be hadn't been the proclaimed Count. She had gone on and on about meeting his daughter or something. And then she'd stumbled on this particularly nasty nest of vamps and had found herself being saved by equally interesting creatures of the night.

Which was why Dawn was on temporary assignment in the Carpathian Mountains, being helpful to her saving demons. The High Council of Watchers had determined that while Dawn may be over the moon about them, that a slayer should be posted with her just to keep her safe. Seeing as half of the High Council was Dawn's family, it didn't come as much of a surprise. Even less shocking was that Dawn had asked Vi to be said slayer.

Vi had gotten all the dish on these Carpathians, sent over secure communication lines to her, and had her bag packed by the end of the conversation with a very hyper Dawn. Now she hefted her heavy black duffle bag over her shoulder as she stepped down from the train that had brought her to this remote and kinda freaky location. Vi sighed as she slipped one of her green ear buds from her iPod into her right ear, and pressed play on her Homesick play list. Jon McLaughlin's voice crooned at her through the ear bud as she started walking in the direction Dawn had instructed her to.

I'm glad I never lived next to the water, so I could never get used to the beach. And I'm glad I never grew up on a mountain, to figure out how high the world could reachThat was about how far she got into the song before the vamp that had been stalking her attacked.